Floods destroy Australian sugarcane but sweep away the rats

Wilmar International

05/02/2025 08:55

CANBERRA, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Torrential rain and flooding
in northeast Australia may have destroyed as much as a million
tons of sugarcane but has also swept away an infestation of
rats, the chairman of a cane farm industry group said on
Wednesday. 
    More than a metre of rain has fallen in some areas in recent
days in a deluge that has killed two people and left swathes of
land under water. Forecasters expect more downpours this week. 
    Flooding in Australia's largest cane growing regions around
Burdekin and the Herbert River in hot and humid north Queensland
is expected to decimate recently planted cane, the CANEGROWERS
industry body said. 
    "It'll knock probably half a million tons to a million tons
of cane off what would otherwise have been there," said
CANEGROWERS chairman Owen Menkens. 
    That would cost growers around A$50 million ($31 million),
he said. 
    A million tons less cane would reduce Australia's annual
refined sugar output by about 130,000 tons, or 3%. Most
Australian sugar is exported. Global production of refined sugar
is about 200 million tons a year.
    Floodwater has encroached on one sugar mill run by
Australia's biggest sugar producer, Wilmar Sugar and Renewables,
cut off another and damaged the rail tracks that take harvested
cane to mills, said the company's operations manager Mike
McLeod. 
    "It's too early to know the extent of damage to our cane
rail network, but we have had reports of ballast washout and
erosion," he said. 
    Australian sugar production is currently suspended for the
wet season and will resume around May. 
    There is a silver lining to the deluge, however - rats that
have infested cane fields will have been drowned and swept away,
Menkens said. 
    "One thing's for sure, there's no rats left."
           
    ($1 = 1.5974 Australian dollars)

 (Reporting by Peter Hobson; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
 ((peter.hobson@thomsonreuters.com;))