What Goes On Inside Australia's Biggest Sugar Farm? | Big Australia | Spark

Australia an island a continent and a country the sixth biggest country in the world with the largest coastline on earth a landmass of over seven and a half million square kilometres Australia lies at the bottom of the globe surrounded by the Pacific Indian and Southern Oceans isolated features border a landscape vast and varied from coastal beaches to farming Plains to deserts and snow-capped mountain ranges Australia is divided into states and territories its major cities are contrasted by wide open spaces of Central Australia there are major engineering maritime and mining projects underway across the country and farming and agricultural industries providing food for the world's growing population this is big Australia almost 1,000 kilometres north of Brisbane in the state of Queensland lies the regional city of Makai it's a tropical climate ideal for growing sugar in fact this area produces more than a third of Australia's sugar cane it's no surprise it's nicknamed the sugar capital of the nation [Music] the Australian sugar industry is big and we have the potential to make it even bigger we'll be getting cause I know pretty impressive for any bit of the women between the three of us it'd have to be sixty odd years from harvesting behind us so we don't know what we're doing now we'll never know sugar is very very big in Queensland it's been around in Queensland for over 150 years there's a very proud history I surrender my right hand over fifty kilos of mind on track we've got about 12,000 tons of of cane turning up from the cane farms daily [Music] what we have now is a climate and a focus on renewables Formica sugar nothing is wasted we're turning McCoy sure cane into green power we perceive the vessel lasat Bellatrix its come from a Singapore and it'll be here to load 26,000 tons of J a raw sugar it's a good almost industry it's full of good down-to-earth people this is my package biggest rally [Music] these farmers are resilient facing plenty of obstacles floods came disease fluctuating prices and changing regulations make it hard for many to stay afloat and there's been an exodus over recent years [Music] I like the farm I don't like the economic pressures that come with it all the time but I love the fun we lost our water during this year because of local government sent a letter out to say get your boss irrigation boys tested and then if you have a certain amount where you you can't water for the next one inch of water year and then you go to get your board tested again the worst thing is when the prices sugar really drops there's nothing else to back up the industry and the state of the mill suffers and and that's when we lend ourselves being taken over there's been times that I can remember I thought all this is the end for the sugar industry every day when something happens you know a lot of times we wonder why we're here and other times you enjoy it it's a big challenge but it's a challenge when you when you win with it it's it's it's great it's like we're in a lot [Music] [Applause] farmers are contracted to supply cane to sugar mills Makai sugar owns four mills in Queensland [Music] we produce over 800,000 tonnes of sugar per annum and we sell that through the domestic refining business and sugar Australia as well as onto the export markets Australia is one of the largest sugar exporting nations in the world it produces up to a whopping 35 million tonnes of cane per year processed this equates to around 5 million tonnes of sugar that's 25 percent heavier than the Australian landmark of ulla Road it also means Australia produces enough sugar to make more than 44 billion litres of soft drink each year Australia's consumption is around 40 kilograms per capita per annum and that is higher than the global average and that reflects the fact that we're a a developed economy and the buying power of the consumer here in Australia one of the major benefits of Australian sugar is is our consistency and quality we have a very high quality and our location to the markets as you can appreciate the Asian market is a significant market and it's it's the area where sugar consumption is growing every year by about 6% around the country thousands of sugar cane growers supplied two dozen mills which ship from multiple ports on Australia's eastern seaboard [Music] now major export destinations is fundamentally the asia-pacific reason a lot of sugar does go to Japan we also send circular places like Taiwan Korea Thailand even some to New Zealand and we're hoping to get between 1700 to 2,000 tons per hour as a as a 300 foot right to load the ship will happen to that within within 20 hours this is big business and this year's harvest is set to begin that is until mother nature steps in to dampen spirits [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Australia's farmland is spectacular lush growth and green fields meet the coastline and cane fields border townships like Makai the snacks that you see the sugar mill have been focal points in many many years and for us to keep going we need to show cane being growing out there Sugar's been grown in Makai for over 100 years and there's a great heritage here almost all of Australia's sugar is grown in the state of Queensland and Makai is Australia's sugar heartland but this beautiful country can aspiring farmers rain is our enemy they regularly face floods or worse cyclones like this one which hit further north the chain industry has also been devastated the damage to the town as big a concern as damage to surrounding crops already the loss to the sugar industry will exceed a billion dollars they've been hurt before by extreme weather and flooding it's hard to bounce back from somehow farmers here we'll have to find the will to move on and rebuild it is a promising crop this year but now unseasonal rain has threatened the harvest at the side of the season we went pretty well had a reasonable start to the season but then it rained and it rained for a couple of weeks constantly makai three mills have been affected by the recent wet weather all are experiencing downtime with not enough pain to crush the weather in North Queensland can vary considerably you can have very long dry spells and we can have floods and cyclones and but even this year we experienced a tornado in Townsville so that was it was a new one for us you always looking up in the sky and see what the weather is doing every day yeah yeah with fire when you rely on the weather a lot eh we're in the agricultural business and there's always weather challenges we faced significant interruptions to our harvest in 2010 and again this year in July we had three times arraign fall which resulted in in us having to stop in the middle of our harvest for over three weeks it's not a not grateful factory's to be shut down for any length of time because it's very difficult to get them back up and running again they'd put everyone out with a planning cycle so it's it's a bit of a rush from there to get it in we just now have to catch up the balance of the season and we will also be crushing for longer so we'll be harvesting all the way up until Christmas here in the Makai area the early days weren't easy either while sugarcane was first brought to Australia on the first fleet the first viable plantation wasn't established until more than 70 years later Pacific Island laborious named kanakas were brought in to work the plantations some voluntary summer slaves in the early 1900's Maltese and other Europeans migrated to Australia seeking a better life many gaining work on labor-intensive cane farms cutting by hand was tough and in the 60s the writing was on the wall labour was getting expensive and so machinery was developed to ensure a viable future and make things easier old technology did the job but as been usurped by mighty machines high horsepower harvesters work around half a million dollars now do the job of dozens of men you would always know it was harvesting season in Queensland by the sound of cracking and burning over cane fields but the industry has now largely looped away from this traditional practice and the majority of growers now green harvest 35 round around the McCoy district it's there's very very few farmers are do it he used to be a very common practice but not anymore because of green cane harvesting in McCoy or suspect there's probably only three to four percent of the area that's burnt most people are hundred percent green harvesting for the benefits of creating that mulch which can be up to 10 to 15 tons per hectare one of the fields to suppress grass keep moisture it has been an absolute revolution for the Blackburn family burning is still the best way to run their business tonight they're setting fire to prepare for the next day's harvest if we cut a green here in the in the trash the green goes to sour and the crop goes backwards it won't grow if we want to get a full potential out of Ln a lot of people have lost the knack how to do it you've gotta have a lot of respect for it but you can control fire if it's dealt with the right way Australia's sugar cane is grown in high rainfall and irrigated districts along hundreds of kilometres of coastal plains and river valleys of the country's north eastern coastline between Mossman in Far North Queensland and Grafton in New South Wales there are more than 4,000 cane farms in these areas [Music] more often than not sugar farms a family-owned and operated the great brothers are second generation farmers that's Kevin yeah when he was a young fellow was backed bark or whatever or giraffe brian is Brumby and yeah they nicknamed me Chuck mum and dad sort of didn't pushes in the farmer we just grew up and loved it from the start my first job has been seven year old well Matthew 34 over the carry on the back clearing new country for kind picking up sticks it's a funny thing I was only thinking about the other week here we used to pick sticks and rocks we never had a tip trial at the tip him off so we were silly mugs we said hard work loading them on there but then we had to unload them one by one again stead of just doing it the easy way tipping it but yeah those sort of things toughening up a bit I suppose [Music] this is where it all starts the planting it's a science based on placing the right cane variety in the right soil the billets which are planted come from harvesting a field of cane growing fresh from certified stock [Music] we're all full up bullets at the back here got elevating for feeding the cane up into the chute and I've got to make sure there's no air pockets in the bottom of here the chute otherwise if there's air pockets that chains going to be full of cane all the time it was not full of cane that's when you get gaps in your drills and that's what you don't want if you lose production within two to three weeks the newly planted cane begins to shoot the roots come out of there out of here and that's the or that's where the chute sticks up that's where the cane comes up that you tear the ground then it just throws out other always and add ISTA tail makes a stool that's how you get a stool a cane let's hear your grace it's hard Yakka out on these farms but only of these brothers running their own farms but they also contract to help others or take a second job to make a decent living rather stay on the land but for me here buddy commitments go over to joins and get that actually a so I didn't come keep everything gone especially now that this farms declared as a dry farm a dry farm means growers can't irrigate government environmental regulations kick in when water salinity samples read too high there's little warning and it can change everything we lost their water during this year because of local government sent a letter out to say get your boss irrigation boss tested and get it tested and they give you a printout of all the minerals in your border in that yeah if it's over that fifteen hundred electrical electrical conductivity well you can't water for twelve months straight up it's a loss of income depending on you your rainfall rainfall from the heavens above if you get a good year you could fluke it but it's this talk of the dry cycle coming back so yeah he's got a Playboy despite the constant challenges joke bark and Brumby wouldn't have it any other way way still together after all these years it's gonna be take a bit separators [Music] also keeping it in the family other dog Waris I was one of number seven of seven kids and st. Gerard's apparently the patron saint of mothers so I saved boy number seven she needed a lot of prayers its I'm sure that's why she made me Jared mom and dad were both born in Malta they came over as 14-year olds not together of course and and but both came in the sugar industry mum with her family and dad his father was already here so he started hand cutting cane with his father Jerry hopes his boys can write out the highs and lows of the industry son Joe wants to keep the farming tradition going all my life have been with dad just living the farm dreaming about work on the farm and I guess I've got the opportunity to be full-time on the farm now for the last four years yeah I'm just happy really happy to be given the opportunity oh I love machinery that's one thing growing up on a farm so I really enjoyed the work I think there's gonna be a good farmer it's only been a couple of years and he knows everything oh well okay I like to stare him up with it sometimes I throw some different ideas in there everything although the thoughts completely wrong keep that we can auto right you know like one thing I've never ever tried to just dictate and tell them anyone what you know I like to learn too and that's probably been more our downfall than we've always been happy to try different things we make some mistakes we've been known to be the laughingstock of McCoy failed ventures we got the job done and Sam's me brother me brother looks after the fertilizer contract and I look after the house and contract together we all look after the farm and and and dad oversees all of it [Music] the day starts of the de Guerra farm at 4:30 a.m. they'll be cutting up to 100 ton of que in an hour with these monster machines [Music] [Music] we're in a John Deere 3510 hiding 20 tongues he had three hundred and 58 saucepan not a rough estimate yet we're probably anointing the moment we'd be getting close to ie2 100 ton of mayo I think that's pretty impressive for any bit of equipment the field can run anywhere from a leader to up to two liters per ton of cane delivered on the line and it's a massive cost in the harvesting sector they just hire horsepower machines you know they're putting a hundred tons per hour on the line and you just need you just there's no way out of spending the money on the fuel even though we don't like it but I mean that's just how it is the machines are reasonably efficient it's just that it's a big job that be done you know we're in here just adjusting the blade cutter blades got a whole the as your harvest age they wear down so we try to keep them at as long as we can just helps us to a better brand job [Music] we're all under a GPS guidance systems by the harvester and oh let us to maintain us central is arrived to assist in doing the best ground a job we can look in larger props it's a it's a great assistance for us to try to see what we call yeah to know where we're going rather than sort of dodging quite feel the dig Waris are glad to have to have a season underway they need to make sure it all goes to plan it can't be any breakdowns and they can must efficiently and without delay make its way to the mill [Music] under the Guara farm as the Kanes kind it spills into a truck known as a hall out there were only 22 of this type ever built in the world [Music] the process keynes goes into a hall out wagon has to be great teamwork because the machines don't have any storage of such so for them to operate they have to have have been under the Alabama so that's where the timing is critical if the the bidding boys not in the right place that's cane thrown on the ground and the farmers don't like that so it's very hard coordinating the speed and and you do harvest reasonably you know at high speeds which is between you know probably four to ten kilometers an hour go all-out takes it slow to the nearby track where the harvest is transferred onto the loca ready for the milk [Music] the mill comes with their locos takes them to the mill and then the milling process begins our commitment is over once we put the cane and those bins on the line then the McCoys shall be looked after that aren't there [Music] without an effective transport network to get the cane from the farms to the mills Australia's sugarcane industry would grind to a halt to get the sugarcane to the mill locomotives are used to tow wagons each bin contains around five and a half ton of cane there is a staggering network of more than 850 kilometres of two-foot gates track in the greater Mackay area servicing three Mackay sugar mills locos work 24 hours a day in the crushing season to keep sending empty bins out to the farms and full bins back to the mill Steve Fisher is the transport supervisor at one of McKay's sugar mills with a career spanning 30 years there isn't much he doesn't know about trains well what goes on on board we're at the Marion will receiving the area for cane supply and we supply cane here 24 hours a day 7 days a week during the crushing season and we roughly load out about 18,000 ton a day of cane on a blip on a good day on a bad day we'd like to be by get down to around about 13 or 14 thousand dollars it's around about 850 kilometres of mainline track accounts of all they're all there is north south east and west we've got various sorrows of life as we start the small ones are 18 10 locomotives then we were 24 hours we progressed into the ball once or at 32 ton borns 40,000 cows and the 94 parts which the 40-ton train as well [Music] [Music] drivers Cheryl and Dale met on the job and now they're partners both on and off the track over the period of time they got together as friends those mates and then they become a team on the locomotives we met actually after my first year working here we met it out nd year breakup party and now they're a team at home as well they become engaged so that's as a love story made on the trains I tell sure when they get it the drive was always in charge of that train today I was in charge [Music] yeah you got my job actually is tell me what to do it's a good team dear little you know just now and I have it all pretty good but we do [Music] this is the nerve center of the train network it's like the Big Brother of the rail system and it's where every train is monitored and tracked this is the hub you this where it all happens it's very important prepare the communication between traffic in there in the locomotives there be chaos out there this is : loco with Cheryl and Dale on it they're heading down back towards the milk with 194 limbs so that's being pretty much yeah runs pretty much done for this this round we take it into the mill and store the skein at the mill there we grab empty carriages empty bins and then we come back out and do overnight deliveries officers of this central hub are on full alert anything can happen at any moment of one of these shifts we have lots of trouble in the wet season because of clay holes and wet track and formation not holding up especially on these hills it can be a bit daunting at times when hilly country and mounted rains it can be a bit slippery and it also have a lot of trouble in the heat with bucking rails and things on it keeps the Moines ticking never a dull moment the mill is awaiting the arrival of Cheryl and dales train locos arrive at the unloading facility adjoining the mill this is where the load is weighed the trains turn up regularly during the day into the full yard possibly around about two and a half thousand bins a day we've got about twelve thousand ton of cane turning up from the cane farm to daily for about 24 25 weeks of the year at the way which the came comes in with the light goes and comes in and writes those rakes identified by the farm number and the farm number is then used to track the cane as it goes through the factory the farm actually gets paid on the weight that he sends in as well as the juice that's extracted out of that kind here a high-tech hydraulic system is put to work the Goliath is a huge bit of machinery that is electrically driven which pulls the rake of cane up onto the Weybridge and spots the bins onto the wave ridge so that they can be way [Music] with the word weather well and truly behind them the cane is coming in thick and fast to the unloading area ready for crushing and processing the cost to the company with it when we shut down for this period of time with Brenes raining is is huge is the real issue at the moment is that we need to get people back focused after the after the shutdown because we are well and truly behind and we need to catch that up [Music] the harvesting season is fully underway and the trains are making their way to racecourse mill the mill needs to be ready for an onslaught of cane it's all systems go to get the harvest off and the mill and refinery in full operation in July we had three times arraign fall which resulted in in us having to stop in the middle of our harvest for over three weeks we just now have to catch up the balance of the season and we will also be crushing for longer so we'll be harvesting all the way up until Christmas here in the Makai area the cane bullets are delivered by rail and weighed then they're dumped onto a conveyer belt and put through the crushing plant the cane is shredded and then sent through six crushing mills removing ninety eight and a half percent of the juice which contains the sugar the juice gets clarified and the impurities are removed it then goes through evaporators to remove the water which then leaves a serum from here the syrup is boiled under vacuum and crystals form these crystals flow through a centrifugal state and the final raw sugar is then dried and either sent to the refinery for further processing or trucked out for shipping from each seventh ton of cane a taxi arrives at the factory we hope to make one ton of sugar out of that from the yard the cane goes into a crusher a huge rotating machine with more than 150 hammers each weighing 28 kilograms pounding the cane at a thousand reps per minute this just beats the cane into a pulp still retaining the the sugar juice into it coming down the beach a these Ritter traveling can you imagine hundred and sixty eight of these hammers hiding in the housing lying about three ideas age crushing the kind into power we are crushing the cane sixth on each one takes a little bit more of the of the sugar out of the fiber [Music] this is a refugee screams all adjacent number one and number two mil comes through here and the farmers extracted out guys straight through to be clarified and give the true the evaporator the next process is clarification where we remove the mud and any impurities out of the juice before it goes to the evaporation stage this is where the the juice comes foods picked up on a vacuum drum filter and all the sugar is sucked out and let the mud is left and that is then recycled back out onto the farm there's still a lot of fertilizer and goodies in it [Music] we remove most of the water out of the juice and leave a product called syrup or liqueur which is the base for making sugar [Music] the actual crystallization stage of I smell you see what's always dry we produce the crystal simply by having a seed which is a small seed crystal and then growing it under vacuum and under heat for about 4 hours something similarly how we used to grow it at school the school projects we used to grow sugar crystals back in my day once the sugar has been made on the pan stage we then move it to the centrifugal we spin the centrifugal around about a thousand rpm we make different brands of sugar by different lengths of time we spin floor and also we wash it with hot water depending on what is needed for the markets adjoining macaws sugars racecourse mill is a refinery the reporting process is all about removing color how we do that essentially we take water from the nose which look and we turn it into refined sugar the raw sugar from the mill next door is sent over in a crystallized state and melted to take out the color then it is recrystallized [Music] we'll mainly bring it into what you see as white sugar is not reached we cannot do anything to cover or mask any of it that is their what we do is employee processes from the sugar in the first place and then recrystallize the pure product as white sugar here it's all about meeting strict quality requirements we need to make sure that the whole process is enclosed that reason it's very imposing with the season delay there's a race to ensure the sugar makes it to the packaging plant located dockside about 15 kilometres from the racecourse refinery this plant is packaging sugar at an extraordinary rate [Music] we produce lots of different sizes of sugar bags everything from one ton fixable bags all the way down to 375 gram bags in general this packaging is 70 up 220,000 tons a year Australia is a global sugar exporting giant and it's a major logistics operation to get this sugar shipped offshore [Music] shipping ports are scattered down the Queensland coastline north of Makai lies the city of Townsville where exporter qsl is preparing to load another vessel we received the vessel thus at Bellatrix it's come from Singapore it'll be here to load 26,000 tons of je raw sugar and we're hoping to get between 1700 to 2,000 tons per hour as a as a throughput right to load the ship the vessel loading process starts starts in the shed where fun and loaders pick up Roxy nine ton buckets of raw sugar tipping into the floor hoppers below the floors of the sheds we have an underfloor conveyor system which combines the sugar up into the ship loader and through a series of conveyors relied sugar pop under the under the ship when you compare ourselves to a lot of countries that we compete in sugar export we can do it fast we have the capability to store a lot of sugar these are big sheds will do between 35 to 40 sugar ships a year it's a constant shipping process all year round and build these sheds deliberately so that we can basically consistently and constantly export sugar while ships are relentlessly loaded and head out for overseas and domestic markets at Mackay sugars racecourse mill they're powering forward there's a big push to ensure nothing is wasted so green renewable energy projects are a big focus the Australian sugar industry has an untapped potential in renewables which we are now focusing on and in the factory behind us we've got a raw sugar mill which then leads into a sugar refinery as well as a cogeneration plant which will power about a third of the electricity needs of this makar district the big pile of fluff like substance is called bagasse it's the fiber left over from crushing the cane to extract sugar it's also a biomass normally McCoy's sugar would crush about say up to six million ton of cane in a year we would generate about two million ton of bagasse from that sugar cane so across our three factories it's about two million ton of the gas and from an energy point of view that's about equivalent to seven hundred thousand ton of coal but of course the bagasse is renewable its leaders are renewable fuel unlike coal which is a fossil fuel what we have in the Mackay district is seventy-two thousand hectares of cane which is an effect one big solar panel which captures the the sun's energy converts it into cane we spit out the juice and make sugar out of that and the balance of that is the fiber the project works like this but gas is conveyed to the mills boilers where it's used as fuel for combustion to heater water and produce steam the steam drives a steam turbine connected to an electrical generator the generator produces high-voltage electricity and this renewable energy is distributed to households via the Mackay electricity grid in a year will push out about two hundred thousand megawatt hours electricity into the local and that will save about 180,000 tons of co2 emissions into the Queensland atmosphere so yes very very significant from a renewable energy project on a big the other advantage to use in bagasse is that Makai sugar is carbon neutral the co2 from our gas our fiber is equivalent to the co2 that's absorbed by the crop grower next year which will harvest so we're recycling our carbon effectively so we are carbon neutral renewable energy is just one project on the Makai sugar list we've got a 20-year plan in place looking at other products biofuels in particular we're we're looking at the concept of making biodiesel from sugar we're also looking at ethanol so we've got a plan to diversify into other areas as well as just electricity this is an industry forever renewing as the world's appetite for sugar is increasing Australia is a huge exporter and a highly competitive global market means it's had to get smarter this is an industry of reinvention from planting to harvesting willing to refining it is a constant challenge to compete to be one of the world's most efficient and innovative sugar producers this is a story of evolution and it's a story that's not over yet [Music] the Australian sugar industry is big and we have the potential to make it even bigger we've got the port facilities we've got the milling capacity we've just got to put more cane into the ground and I think we've got the opportunities right now if the sugar price where it is to take advantage of that and to add value so that we're not just reliant on sugar but we have electricity and ethanol to support our base [Music] I love it like itself come back with my seven seas and back here I do have an opportunity to drive but well on to the aim on this train on this run and again I love it I'll say as a DA as a child the school I grow sugar crystals I'm still growing sugar crystals 40 years later 40 how's that the good part of our found here is the fact that myself and two sons can work together on a farm and get on and hopefully it'll be passed on to another generation and generation after that there's nothing like being here in the sugar fields it's a great life do I like sugar my word I like sure [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 848,353

Rating: 4.759522 out of 5

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, science documentary, science photography, science explained, science experiment, sugar cane farm australia, sugarcane, farming, sugar, canegrowers, australia, agriculture, sugar cane, queensland, farm, industry, fertiliser, cane, australian

Id: AFfi6H4Heyw

Length: 45min 23sec (2723 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/forgotusernameagain]

Documentary or paid publicity?

[u/wotmate]

LOL. Meanwhile Mackay biggest industry is coal mining in the Bowen basin, not sugar cane.