This is a shout out to Sonia Ball from Canegrowers, who we had a fantastic meeting with a few weeks ago. A lot of the difficult thinking in my earlier blog post emerged from our discussion with Sonia, who is the Canegrowers Manager of Communications. Canegrowers is “the principal body representing the state’s sugarcane growers”, advocating […]
Over the past month while I’ve been here in Mackay I’ve met many people who are in some way connected with agriculture – soil scientists, environmental scientists, official representatives of the sugarcane industry, local food producers, Australian South Sea Islanders who are descended from the indentured canefield labourers of the last century, a local MP […]
Following our meeting with Jim Pearce MP, we’ve been thinking about what a Sugar Cane Demonstration Farm could look like. On Saturday Kim and I sat down with farmer Simon Mattsson and brainstormed a few ideas. I made the scrappy sketch pictured above while we talked. Fundamental idea 1: The Sugar Cane Demonstration Farm needs […]
On Friday Lucas and I spent the day at Simon Mattson’s farm, having a fun time printmaking with his wife Susie, son Luke and daughter Sophie while Simon was out in the paddocks working. The harvesting crew could be seen in the background, giving the fully grown sugarcane a number one clip to the ground. […]
John Sweet called up Jim Pearce, the state Labor MP for Mirani and asked for a meeting. As part of John’s vision to redesign the entire Great Barrier Reef Catchment along Keyline principles, he brings together people to catalyse that small thing which might just set something big in motion. So the fact that Kim and I are visiting Mackay was John’s occasion to “Summon […]