Cane growers be proud
THE Queensland Environment Minister, in attempting to justify her government’s move to ramp up red tape on sugarcane growers already working under stringent laws, has made claims and used figures recently which beg clarification and correction.
Canegrowers is proud of the decades of sugarcane industry commitment to improving farming methods and managing our impact on waterways that feed into the Great Barrier Reef.
Leeanne Enoch claims that at 11 per cent of growers accredited under the industry’s Smartcane BMP best management practice program is not good enough and that program uptake has not been fast enough. But she has failed to point out that those 11 per cent of cane growing businesses manage 25 per cent of the sugarcane farm area in Queensland.
Nor did the minister acknowledge the rapid progress towards voluntary accreditation that is underway across the state’s cane growing regions.
The target for Smartcane BMP, which is operated with support from the Queensland Government, is for 92 per cent of the cane area in the Wet Tropics Region to be benchmarked and 51 per cent accredited by 2022.
At June 2019, growers had already benchmarked 82 per cent of the cane area while 40 per cent had passed an accreditation audit.
The Burdekin region paints a very similar picture while the Mackay-Whitsunday region is almost halfway to its accreditation target with growers on a waiting list for independent third party auditors to become available.
We are struggling to understand the minister’s disappointment in Smartcane BMP when the agreed targets are in sight with more than two years to go.
Canegrowers members have every right to be proud of their achievements – for the environment and for the productivity and profitability gains they are making towards positioning themselves to meet international market demands for sustainable sugar.
Working with us, supporting and acknowledging growers is the pathway to lasting change and prosperity. Dan Galligan, Canegrowers, Brisbane 1902: Women are granted the vote in
NSW. 1945: US troops begin landing in Japan
at end of World War II. 2003: Mars passes just 55.76 million kilometres from Earth in the closest such encounter since the Stone Age. 2013: Australian journalist and former host of ABC’s This Day Tonight current affairs program, Bill Peach, dies aged 78. 2015: The body of Queensland teen Jayde Kendall is found at Upper Tenthill, 14km from her Gatton home, 13 days after she disappeared. 2017: Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby (above) is named joint winner of the Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the year before she would become famous worldwide for Netflix special Nanette.