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.

From local rivers to Sydney’s Macquarie University – three Mamu Rangers and Terrain NRM’s Alicia Buckle recently took a deep dive into the science behind environmental DNA.

Environmental DNA (eDNA): What is it?

Environmental DNA, or eDNA, is changing the way we monitor ecosystems and it’s particularly useful in places where traditional monitoring would be dangerous (because of crocodiles) or would cause too much disturbance (in sensitive ecosystems or for rare and endangered species).

It’s being used for many things – from detecting pest fish like tilapia in our creeks and rivers or seeing whether polluted waterways are becoming healthier to monitoring endangered swordfish or finding crown-of-thorns starfish before they mature and cause major problems on the Reef.

Local waterways: How eDNA sampling helps

For Mamu Rangers, eDNA analysis is helping to monitor culturally significant species without land managers having to spend countless hours searching for them, or installing cameras and traps.

“We are using eDNA sampling to help us determine whether species like gudgeon, barramundi and mangrove jack are present or absent in waterways,’’ Mamu Ranger Francis Joyce says. “From there we’ll look at how to manage our waterways better for them.

“Being at the laboratory was amazing – it gave us more of an appreciation of all the science that happens after our sampling, and why our project’s design and sampling methods are so important.”

Fast Facts: eDNA in the laboratory

DNA is in the biological matter in samples.

Molecules called primers are released into the mixture and they attach to target sections of the DNA strands.

These sections can be used as a ‘barcode’ (like we have on products at a supermarket).

Many copies of the barcode sections are made.

These samples are sequenced to look at what species are present. Just like at the supermarket checkout, DNA barcodes can be matched to species in a database to give us a list of animals and plants found in the sample.