Mechanical cane harvesting brings bittersweet success to sugar industry waiting for next big innovation – ABC News

Every year during the crushing season, I watch in awe as the cane harvesters beat a monotonous and familiar path. Row by row, block by block, week by week, the green, carpeted landscape transforms to bare, red-brown earth.

Witnessing those powerful machines as they swallow up the cane like a giant, ride-on lawn mower, I think of my 18-year-old grandfather and the thousands of young men like him who came to Queensland’s cane fields to make money and find adventure.

They swung cane knives from dawn to dusk and in an average day, a fit bloke could put away up to 10 tonnes of burnt cane, depending on the topography and soil type.

According to my granddad, he was well into his second season before a union representative visited and successfully negotiated ‘stone money’ for the extra effort and time involved keeping his knives sharp while working rocky ground.

His nickname ‘Snow’, a reference no doubt to his blond crop of hair and fair Finnish features, must have seemed out of place among the blackened faces as his gang returned to the barracks each night.

It was indicative of an era — between the Great Depression and two world wars — in which men like Snow McKeen were willing to do whatever it took to lift their lot in life.

One of eight children, at age 17 he’d already cut timber in southern Queensland alongside his father and dug peanuts through a winter at Kingaroy.

Escaping to the tropical north to cut cane must have seemed an attractive proposition. But the conditions were rough, even against his low expectations.

Snow said that when washing in the river, they would throw the dog in first as a precaution against crocodiles!

There is no doubt the molasses-soaked sweat and toil of its largely migrant workforce was pivotal to laying the foundations of the Australian sugar industry.

In the 1880s, thousands of indentured South Sea Islanders were relied on to supply sugar mills that were being established at a rapid rate from northern New South Wales to Queensland’s far north.

After World War II, it was mostly European gangs working in the cane fields.

John Rossi remembers the men who worked on the farm established by his migrant father who arrived at Aloomba, south of Cairns, from Italy in 1924.

“These were super fit men,” he said.

“They’d have a Jackie Howe singlet on while they were swinging the knife; then, the next morning, they’d put on what we used to call a ‘giggle’ jacket to save their skin while they were loading 50-kilo bundles of cane, onto a three-tonne woodie.”

By the 1950s, the dynamics were changing. Pay and living conditions had improved, but workers willing and able to do the ‘hard yakka’ were becoming scarce. So, the quest for a mechanical alternative gained momentum.

‘From humble beginnings, big ideas’

The breakthrough came in 1959. Mr Rossi’s older brothers, Robert and Rick, were credited for being the first to bring a prototype of the Massey Ferguson 515 to the district. Overnight, the volume of cane being cut doubled.

Mr Rossi says the manufacturer’s engineers were parked in the shed for months, adapting and modifying the experimental model.

Unlike the whole-stick harvesters already being trialled, the 515 was a ‘chopper’ harvester, so-called because cane was chopped into evenly sized billets and sent to the mill in specially meshed bins.

“It hung off the side of the tractor so it wasn’t much good in the wet weather … so eventually, extended axles came in and we slowly got faster and faster as we progressed to self-propelled machines,” Mr Rossi said.

It was a paradigm shift that sparked enormous change and, ultimately, paved the way for the next single-biggest step change: green cane harvesting, a practice now used by 85 per cent of the industry.

However, as Basil Micale recalls, it was some time before the cane knife could be retired completely from the paddock.

“The first year I started mechanical cane harvesting [1964] we were cutting 60 tonne a day and I reckon we were [still] cutting 30 tonnes by hand because the machine just couldn’t handle it,” he said.

“Then, technology took over and the machines today are just magic.”

Mr Micale looks fondly over an original 515 with its 18-horsepower engine, which holds pride of place at the Australian Sugar Heritage Centre, at Mourilyan, south of Innisfail.

“Now you’ve got monsters with 500 horsepower engines cutting 1,000 tonnes a day. Could you ever envisage that, looking at this?” he said.

“So, from small humble beginnings, big ideas.”

After decades of locally owned and paddock-driven innovation, Mr Micale says it has been disappointing to lose Australian manufacturing offshore.

“I still have red paint running through my veins,” he said, in reference to Massey Ferguson’s trademark colour.

“And then along came Toft, another Queensland icon that started in Bundaberg, and now the Toft harvester is built in Brazil.”

Mechanical progress had also come at a cost to regional economies inextricably linked to the influx of workers for the crushing season.

“In the early 60s, you’d have 1,200 or 1,300 men coming to Innisfail and 300 wharfies loading a boat, now you’ve got 18 or 20 men at the bulk sugar terminal loading up to 2,000 tonnes an hour,” Mr Micale said.

“Businesses gradually faded out because there was no-one left to service, only the locals and they just couldn’t support the shops. Once this town had seven theatres — now there’s not even one.”

Sugar industry seeks next ‘quantum’ leap

As contract harvester Joe Marano manoeuvres his machine, cane stalks are gathered, topped and chopped at a rate of about 100 tonnes an hour.

He could push his machine harder to get the bins filled more quickly but, ultimately, it wouldn’t do him or the grower or the mill any good.

“The biggest killer of harvesting is speed,” Mr Marano said, referring to costly cane losses, as well as unwanted extraneous matter ending up in bins because the cleaning chamber cannot keep up.

After 30 years of cutting cane, Mr Marano says he believes innovation in the industry has stagnated.

“A [grain] header used to be 10 feet [3 metres] wide, now they’re 60 feet [18m].

“We used to cut one row at 4′ 10” [1.5m], now we cut one row at 6 feet [1.8m] — but it’s still only one row.

“We need quantum change to survive when you’re only getting $28 to $30 a tonne. That’s what we were getting back in the 70s and 80s.”

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Bigger not necessarily better

Sugar Research Australia adoption officer Phil Patane says it is only a matter of time before a multi-row cane harvester becomes a reality.

In the meantime, incremental practice change is just as important to drive productivity gains.

“It’s like me asking you to drive from Cairns to Ingham at exactly 100kph without an odometer and that’s what we’ve been expecting industry to do.

“All I can say is watch this space. It’s positive because bigger and faster is not necessarily the best way to go.”

In my grandad Snow’s day, no-one needed a predictive monitor or economic cost analysis to tell him if cane had been left on the ground. But he was cutting 10 tonnes a day — not 100 tonnes an hour.

Just as growers and engineers tinkered in cane sheds to get it right in the 1960s and 70s, the next crop of researchers and developers is working closely with the sugar industry to ensure it has the tools to keep pace with the inherent challenges that come with new technology.