After 18 months from hell, these farmers are doing everything they can to save their crops

The first flood was the worst. Early last year a low-pressure system lurked off the east coast sucking moisture in over northern NSW and southern Queensland where, over the last days of February, 670 millimetres of rain fell.

The impact on Lismore was catastrophic. Four were dead by the time the waters receded and 3000 homes hit. Reasonably, national attention remained focussed on the plight of that town, and on others like it, struck by floods, but life has not been easy for the farmers of flood-hit regions.

When Lismore experienced its worst flooding event in recorded history, the debris was carried away by floodwaters and filled up the Richmond River’s cane fields. Farmers were unable to harvest cane for several months.Credit: Dean Sewell

When the waters peaked at Coroki, half an hour’s drive south, they flooded cane farmer Geoff Pye’s home, high on an embankment over the Richmond River.

“We live on a flood plain, and I’ve seen 20-odd floods over the years,” said Pye this week. “But never anything like that.” Pye’s towering crop disappeared beneath the floodwaters.

Pye, who also serves as chairman of the Richmond Rivers Cane Growers Association, had built the place to council specs – 600 millimetres above a one-in-a-100-year flood level – and the waters peaked 400 millimetres above that. The old stilted Queenslander nearby that he grew up in and now rented out had water through it at chest height. His son Max’s place down the road lost the lower floor.

In town the flood peak was measured at 7.4 metres.

The inland sea stayed in place for 10 days before draining into the Pacific where the river meets the sea beneath the Ballina lighthouse. The ground stayed wet, and the second flood hit on April Fools’ Day. As the waters rose, Max and his wife Mateeka dashed off from where they were staying at Evans Head to hospital where she gave birth to their second child, a little girl called Arnie.

A skeleton of a dairy cow in the cane after being washed down from dairy country above the fields.Credit: Dean Sewell

By the time the ground was dry enough to drive into the fields, it was clear the damage had been significant. Pye reckons farm vehicles and equipment that might have been moved to higher ground was damaged because flood warnings to did not properly prepare them for the scope of the disaster.

Though “cane can take a bit of water” as Pye puts it, much of the crop was lost to the prolonged inundation. Nonetheless, it needed to be harvested, which presented special difficulties.

Cane grows over a two-year cycle, so much of the harvesting work began over recent months.

Across the region, cane fields were full of potentially dangerous rubbish dumped by the receding floodwaters. Fence posts and tree branches could wreck a harvester, Pye explains, but that is not all they found in the fields. When we first visited his farm in October we came across the rotting remains of dead cattle.

Two Boral cement mixers are left high and dry amongst cane near the township of Woodburn in the Richmond River region, washed up after the Lismore floods. Credit: Dean Sewell

Pye found a swimming pool in one of his fields and a concrete pontoon in another. Neighbours came across the gigantic barrel of a destroyed cement mixer. The Rural Fire Service turned out to help, helping to inspect the cane with drones. It was the gas bottles that worried Pye the most. It wouldn’t take much to make one of them explode, he feared.

“It’s been a big ask for all the guys harvesting. You imagine, you know; hurting your eyeballs trained on what’s in front of you because it’s hard to see into the crop.”

But the damage from the floods went further. Both the regions’ sugar mills were inoperable for months and, once they were repaired and running, the depleted crop meant that they could not run at full capacity. Since they operate as collectives, with growers funding their operation, this increased costs to all the members.

Between repairs and replacement and loss of income, Pye reckons the floods have cost him around $1 million so far.

Richmond River cane farmers, Geoff Pye and son Max from Coraki, inspect debris in drowned cane farms after the Lismore floods. Credit: Dean Sewell

The rain kept falling on and off until around last October, when the Herald first visited. By then Pye had put a crop of rice in to try to make some use of some of sodden fields. And then suddenly the water stopped. It got so dry so fast that the rice failed to even head.

“We basically lost that crop. All we could do was bale it for stock feed, and we probably might have got half our money back.”

Drought was declared across the region in July, while 99 per cent of the state remained in the clear.

In a reasonable year Pye harvests around 13,000 tonnes of cane. Last year, due to the floods, he harvested 7000. This year, due to the damage from the floods combined with the growing impact of the drought, he has just taken in 5000 tonnes.

In recent weeks cane farmers across the region have been burning their crops in preparation for harvest, which has now been completed. Pye has a new crop in now, though some of his neighbours were short of cane for propagation, so battered were their operations. When the Herald last spoke with him on Thursday, rain was forecast.

“Yesterday was an absolute scorcher, 36 degrees and a howling wind,” he says. “A bit of rain would solve a few problems. With a bit of rain the farm would start looking like a million dollars.”

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