Sweet Talk with Robert Hawken Sweet Talk with Robert Hawken

FEBRUARY INTO March has seen excellent weather for the cane crop and soybeans, resulting in some very good soy crops all over the Northern Rivers. If weather conditions continue to be favourable there will be an excellent harvest of soybean this year. Soybean harvest should be underway in late April or early May.

The Tweed and Byron area cane crop continues to improve, and the estimate is now better than last year’s crop.

The 2023 Condong crop could reach 485,000 tonnes if favourable weather prevails through autumn.

This year has become very challenging for the region’s canegrowers as well as for other rural producers.

The two catastrophic floods of last year still have lingering effects, some of which have only become apparent in recent months.

One example is the huge amount of exotic weed and grass seeds that were deposited into cane farms, with the result of an enormous increase in weeds and grasses.

These weeds need controlling or they dominate the crop and wider environment.

Fortunately, we are mostly able to control these invasive weeds with the use of modern herbicides but at a big cost to farmers.

Growers who keep their farms clean of weeds and grasses have very few rats in the cane crop, because rats feed on grass seed and thrive in grassy areas.

When living within a cane crop, the genus Rattus rattus can do extensive damage to mature sugar cane.

The introduction of minimum till and