A $7.5 million project will help sugar cane growers in the Wet Tropics continue to fine-tune farming practices – increasing productivity and improving the quality of water flowing to the Great Barrier Reef.

Terrain NRM has secured funding through the Australian Government’s Reefwise Farming Program for a two-and-a-half-year project focusing on fertiliser application and managing crop diseases and pests.

The project will help cane growers across more than 6700 hectares from Cairns to Ingham, and will support on-farm activities that hone in on pesticide and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) entering our waterways, as well as particulate nitrogen and phosphorous.

Partnering with Canegrowers and Sugar Research Australia

Terrain NRM is working with Canegrowers Cairns, Canegrowers Innisfail, Sugar Research Australia and Canegrowers Herbert River on the project, which will include dollar-for-dollar grants for cane farmers adopting new practices, nutrient management plans, farm trial sites and field days.

The Herbert, Tully, Johnstone and Russell-Mulgrave catchments rank among the highest priorities in the entire Great Barrier Reef catchment for reducing dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and pesticide loads to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

Terrain NRM’s Jamie Thornberry said on-farm practice change and innovation was continuing to play a pivotal role in the delivery of water quality outcomes for the region.

“As a region with high rainfall and a close proximity to the reef, intensive agricultural systems will continue to be presented with unique challenges,” he said.

“Farmers have come a long way in accepting these challenges as a part of doing business in the region and continuing to manage nutrient runoff, sediment and pesticides to achieve water quality outcomes.”

Scaling up proven changes to farming practices

He said the new project would scale up changes to farming practices that had proven to be effective over a number of years, with actions tailored to each part of the region.

“Projects will be targeting the specific needs of each region, with dollar-for-dollar grants in the Ingham and Cairns areas to support things like changing fertiliser application methods, laser-levelling, precision application of mill mud and ash, and optimising liming practices.

Extension help with new or updated nutrient management plans

“Extension officers will be working with growers in the Tully and Innisfail regions on new or updated nutrient management plans, and on everything from identifying and managing crop constraints to ameliorant and cane variety selection. They will also be working with growers in the Cairns and Ingham regions.

Banana, grazing and cane land will be improved in the Cassowary Coast region through a new $2 million project.

Terrain NRM will be working with landholders from Innisfail to Kennedy on initiatives to increase the resilience of their land through a ‘Future Farms’ project funded by the Queensland Government.

Help after extreme weather events

“Local landholders have been subject to extreme weather events in recent years, and this program will fund on-ground initiatives to improve farm resilience and soil and land conditions,” Minister for Natural Resources, Mines, Manufacturing and Regional and Rural Development Dale Last said.

Terrain NRM is working with the Australian Banana Growers Council, Canegrowers Innisfail, the Cassowary Coast Graziers Association and landholders on the program, which is built around directly improving soil health, soil condition, land condition and waterway health.

Demonstration sites on farms

As part of the project, several landholders will host demonstration sites on cane, banana and grazing land. On cane land, these sites will focus on mixed species fallow crops, improved drainage, laser levelling and soil amelioration.

In grazing country, the focus will be on pasture management including legume planting, strategic paddock layout and erosion control along waterways using revegetation and fencing.

On banana-growing land, demonstration sites will showcase contouring to help mitigate erosion on slopes and farm drainage design and streambank remediation to reduce sediment loss.

Terrain NRM’s CEO Stewart Christie said the Cassowary Coast region had experienced repeated severe weather events over the past two decades including Cyclones Larry (2006), Yasi (2011), Niran (2021) and Jasper (2023), and major flooding from tropical lows in 2025.

“These events, following decades of land-use pressures, have extensively damaged the region’s agricultural landscapes, resulting in financial losses and long-term degradation of land and waterways,’’ he said.

Liquid compost sprayer trials have begun on the Atherton Tablelands as landholders explore new ways to improve their soils and reduce chemical inputs.

Farmers are working with Terrain NRM to trial a sprayer designed to support the survival of beneficial bacteria in live liquid compost application. The Cyclone Multi-Task Sprayer arrived from New Zealand last month.

Kairi grazier Kellie Evans, who is also president of the farmer-led Wet Tropics Soilcare group, is one of the landholders trialling the sprayer.

“Nutrition straight to the leaf surface”

“We’ve been making our own compost for four to five years and using a muck spreader to apply it to our pastures before the wet season,’’ she said. “With the new sprayer, we can also have a liquid compost foliar feeder. It gets nutrition straight to the leaf surface and does it efficiently.

“This sprayer is something we’ve been looking at through the Wet Tropics Soilcare group. Through Terrain NRM, it has been brought to the region and we’re hoping for wider usage by landholders once we’ve completed a three-year trial period.”

A sprayer designed for bulk live-liquid products

Terrain NRM’s Maria Ribbeck said the sprayer’s point of difference was its specific design for bulk live-liquid products.

“It can constantly rotate the liquid and keep it aerated. There are no right angles to clog up and the water oxygen levels are at six per cent, which is important for adding aerobic biology,’’ she said.

“Farmers will be trialling two applications a year during growing season and, ideally, we will expand the applications to vermicast, seed distribution, use of bio dynamic preps and mineral balancing.

Reducing chemical inputs while improving soil, water and carbon properties

“The goal is to reduce chemical inputs while improving soil function and structure, water retention and carbon sequestration. It’s also to have an economical alternative for landholders.”

So far, Kellie has sprayed 29 hectares of pasture with liquid compost while Ravenshoe biodynamic graziers Lisa Price and Simon Harden are part way through their first application on 50 hectares.

“We’ve been making thermal compost since 2018 but we hadn’t found an effective way to get it out in volume, and quickly enough across the hectares not to lose oxygen,’’ Lisa said.

Climate Smart funding for Wet Tropics farmers

New farming technology will be put through its paces in the Far North as part of a $1.25 million project, announced this week.

Terrain NRM is working with farmers from across industries and the region to trial machinery and equipment and hold on-farm demonstrations and workshops as part of a larger program focused on helping farmers to adapt to changing conditions.

The Australian Government this week announced a $76 million investment in the Climate Smart Agriculture Program, funding 54 projects across Australia to help primary producers adopt climate-smart sustainable agriculture practices.

Trials in the Wet Tropics

Terrain NRM’s Maria Ribbeck said the projects in the Wet Tropics region included trialing a Cyclone multi-task sprayer for liquid compost application on grazing land, using a Soilkee Renovator to plant mixed species crops in pasture, and bringing an air seeder to the Mossman region for trials of alternative crops and revenue streams.

“The trials will cover 200 hectares of land, collectively, over five properties,’’ Maria said.

“We will be monitoring implementation and establishment costs and weighing this up against impacts on productivity and profitability to give the region’s farmers local case studies for climate-smart farming opportunities, as well as local farms to look at and farmers to hear from.

Workshops on sustainable farming practices

“We will also be holding workshops on sustainable farming practices with farmers across the cane, banana, grazing, dairy and tropical fruit sectors.”

We loved seeing cane growers, banana farmers, graziers, tropical fruit producers and forestry come together for our free soil health workshops led by Simon Mattsson from Soil Land Food.

From examining soil cubes and understanding soil biology to unpacking the carbon and nitrogen cycles – these workshops were all about building the foundations for soil health improvements in the paddock.

Simon is also a farmer and he talked about his own transition from “very conventional sugar cane farming” to regenerative farming with as much focus on what’s happening below the soil’s surface as the crops growing above it. His experiences sparked plenty of discussions.

These workshops, in Tully, Mossman and the Tablelands, followed on from years of ‘Digging Deeper’ soil health sessions. It was great to see new faces and familiar faces. The growing momentum around soil health across the Wet Tropics is both encouraging and exciting.

The workshops were part of Terrain NRM’s Climate Smart Farming in the Wet Tropics project. This project is supported by the Australian Government through funding from the Natural Heritage Trust under the Climate Smart Agriculture program.

A Malanda dairy farmer is trialling new technology to improve pasture and productivity – and the results will be showcased at a demonstration day on Thursday 6 June.

Glen Drury has been working with Terrain NRM to trial the Soilkee Renovator, a minimum till pasture cropping machine that mulches and aerates the soil while planting multiple species into existing pastures. The renovator was designed by Victorian beef producer Niels Olsen, the first Australian farmer to earn carbon credits for his soil under a government-regulated system.

Niels and Glen will be sharing their learnings and land improvements at the demonstration day, on Thursday 6 June, along with Australian Holistic Management Coop CEO Helen Lewis whose organisation, as part of the project, has begun monitoring Glen’s land to measure regenerative outcomes over the next five years.

Glen has planted a mixture of seasonal crops and pasture seeds with the Soilkee Renovator on 150 acres of his 450-acre property.  The aim is to build up pasture biodiversity, soil microbes and carbon.

“We’ve been putting in ryegrass, chicory and clovers for years but the new technology gives us more variety,’’ he said. “We’ve planted legumes, cereal, ryegrass, peas, beans and brassicas. A lot of those seeds are too big to go through the old planter.

“We are looking to grow more feed and more milk.”

He said minimum till was another advantage. “Before, if we worked up a whole paddock, we got really good feed but we had problems when it got wet trying to graze it out. And in the summer when we ploughed and there was heavy rain, it led to erosion.

Four years of ‘citizen science’ mulch trials on lime farms in the Mareeba region has shone a light on what kinds of mulch are the best performers – and it has also led to farming changes.

Mutchilba horticulturalists Michelle and Ante Milicevic are now using Rhodes grass hay annually right across two orchards and, as a result, they’ve improved soil health and significantly reduced their watering and spraying regimes.

“We’d put tea tree and hay in before but not every year,’’ Michelle said. “Since starting annual mulching we’ve been watering a lot less. We used to water every two to three days in the hot dry weather. Now we can push it out to every four or five days, and even a little bit more if we need to.

“Before the trials, we sprayed to keep the weeds down so that our sprinklers worked well. Now we’re not spraying as much because the weeds aren’t coming up. And the ground is a lot easier to dig up. The soil is softer, even where it’s being worked outside the mulch row.”

Four mulches trialled

Terrain NRM and the farmer-led Wet Tropics Soilcare group trialled four mulches – hay, tea tree, pine wood chip and organic matter from mowing the inter-rows – on two farms in the Mareeba district.

Hay was the best performer, followed by tea tree and organic matter. Terrain NRM agronomist Sally Fields said the long-term soil health benefits of woodchip were also evident.

“The trials were on farms with sandy loam soils with a low capacity to hold nutrients (a cation exchange capacity of less than two on both sites at baseline testing in 2021). We took a bunch of measures, full soil tests, leaf sap testing, penetrometer readings and worm counts, and monitored soil health parameters of infiltration. An average yield per tree was also recorded on three occasions at Milinder Farming.

“Growers are recognising more and more the importance of ground cover – keeping your soil covered at all times protects it from water and wind erosion and maximises water infiltration. But many orchards continue to spray under trees and have bare ground under the canopy. We took on this project with Wet Tropics Soilcare because growers were curious to see how much mulch mattered.”

Healthier, more productive trees

Ms Fields said one telling result was the “phenomenal” difference between using side-throw from the mower and mulching – with noticeably healthier and more productive trees under hay and tea tree mulch.

Soil analysis results from both farms showed soil health had also improved under mulch.

She said the trials showed the soil health benefits of woodchip mulch in particular, but also the need to carefully select and apply your woodchip.

“The best choice is ramial (branch) woodchip because the nutrient loads are much higher in the branch-growing region of a tree. Woodchip taken from the trunk will have higher carbon and nitrogen rates and it’ll need more time to break down before using it. Hardwood is better than softwood for orchards. Softwoods like pine need to sit for at least six to 12 months before application to make sure tannins and chemical compounds have leached out.

Terrain NRM will be bringing innovative soil technology to the Wet Tropics region thanks to a new project through funding from the TNQ Drought Hub.

Agronomist Sally Fields said Terrain would create a demonstration site for the Soilkee Renovator on an Atherton Tablelands farm, and would thoroughly assess the seed planter’s potential to improve pasture quality, fertility and resilience in the Wet Tropics.

She said project staff would also work closely with Victorian farmer Niels Olsen, who invented the Soilkee Renovator. The specialist seed planter mulches strips of pasture and can sow a diverse mix of seasonal seeds and seed sizes with minimal paddock disturbance, creating a mass of plant roots for a range of benefits from increasing soil fertility and improving pasture to storing carbon at depth.

“This project is all about activating regenerative soil functions and fertility, increasing the soil’s water-holding capacity and building stable soil carbon in pasture while eliminating the paddock downtime that’s traditionally associated with pasture renovation,’’ Sally said.

“Precision planting of winter annuals into tropical grasses increases diversity and resilience in slow-growing periods. It also allows for slower rotation of cattle and gives graziers more options for stock movements and carrying capacity during the cooler months.

“And it can help to develop healthy soils, improving their capacity to retain moisture and activating the nutrient cycle.”