Cane Rates Highly By Kevin Borg, Chairman, CANEGROWERS Mackay

One of CANEGROWERS’ primary roles is services to industry, and we have been tackling the issue of high valuations and rates applied to peri-urban agricultural land in Mackay region for several years now.

Council says the valuations set the pace for rates, but it is well known that there are many levers they can pull, structural changes like banding and capping. Residential properties are banded, but when it comes to rural rating, there is only Canefarming and Other Rural. The Cane-farming rate in the dollar is akin to a shopping complex or a commercial/industrial property. Other Rural is half the amount, be it aquaculture, high intensity horticulture, grazing, hay production. Mackay’s rural rating system is a blunt tool that literally canes one sector of agriculture. Whitsunday, for example, has eight banded rural categories across a variety of production types.

Over these past few years, we’ve had several meetings with council, including a recent meeting including a group of the affected growers. Yes, there was a small drop in the cents in the dollar rate, but this did not address the bigger problem. Cane should not be council’s cash cow, but it does seem to be addicted to the sugar hit.

It is a fact that councils across Queensland are trapped in an antiquated funding model with limited means of raising revenue. The budgeting seems to require that the cane sector pay the high rate. But equity an rural rating is paramount in ensuring a viable industry.

Frankly, it is a struggle to get council’s understanding on the pressure this places on the sugar industry. Yes, council did apply a rate reduction that resulted in a decrease for growers, but did not alleviate the pressure placed on growers near the edge of the city, with those people facing around 150-250 % increases in their rates bill since the last round of state land valuations.

In real terms, that can see these growers facing rates bills upwards of $6000 and beyond into the teens. One grower has said that it is a cost of the first $3 a tonne of his cane goes to paying his rates bill. Cane farms are small family businesses, by and large. In most cases, these properties are generational farms, and peoples homes as well. The city has grown out around them, with housing developments spreading the suburban footprint. Also, more people are going for lifestyle blocks, with affording high prices upwards of $41,900/ha made possible by high incomes from other industries but consequently skewing property valuations.

For the farmers, this increased nominal value is not something they will realise. Ideally, farms are passed down through generations or perhaps sold on retirement if there is no family succession.

Council has said that large rates increases “only” affect six growers. We have a list of 20+ growers whose cost of production has been severely impacted by steep rates increases, and we know that the footprint of affected cane land in the peri-urban space is around 5000ha in Mackay. Why does that matter? Two of our Mackay mills (Racecourse and Farleigh) are within that peri-urban footprint. Not only is the alluvial plain around the Pioneer some of our most productive agricultural land, it is also the closest to the mill, therefore the most affordable for the mills to transport for processing. Pushing farming away from the city increases costs for the millers, and incrementally challenges viability.

It is a fact: not all ag land is created equally and some places are more productive than others. They produce more tonnes to the hectare.

Cane is a big part of our regional economy, and potentially a massive part of a future biocommodities sector including fuels, fibres and food. So, it is worth supporting that with sound ratings practices that encourage industry viability. No mill means no growers, insufficient tonnes means no mill.

If we continue to drive a wedge between industry infrastructure and good quality agricultural land, our industry will certainly suffer, and the regional economy along with it.

Last of all. Mackay’s character – used prolifically in marketing the region - features a city flanked in cane, where green cropping spaces are part of the town’s character.

The sugar industry is what Mackay is built on. If we drive that away, it can never be recovered.

Is that what we want as a region?

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Much cropping land has been lost over time around Mackay’s expanding city edge This image is of The Sugar Research Institute in the 60s, showing cane where modern-day Paget now stands. Photo credit: MCL Archive

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