NSW farmers assessing damage after ex-tropical cyclone Alfred

The clean-up is continuing in the wake of cyclone Alfred. Crops have been badly hit in the north of New South Wales as has the fishing industry.

Transcript

00:00And we're here today on the north coast of New South Wales.

00:04We've been looking at the damage from ex-tropical cyclone Alfred and we've been hearing about

00:09concerns from beef producers, also dairy farmers who've had to tip out thousands of, tens of

00:16thousands of litres of milk.

00:18Also we're hearing the situation with fishermen who haven't been able to get out in their

00:22boats for the last couple of weeks or so and now they're worried about fish kill events

00:27from black water where the water is draining off the land and into the rivers and oceans

00:34causing concerns about the amount of fish that are out there.

00:37But one crop that we've been looking at today is the sugarcane situation and I'm joined

00:43now by Ross Farlow who is the New South Wales Farmers Cane Growers Association Chairman.

00:50Thanks for joining us today and I guess looking behind us we can see the sort of damage here

00:56on your farm, this is a soybean crop.

00:59Yeah, hello Michael, this is one of the soybean crops on our farm, 20 acre field behind us

01:04and there's another 20 or so affected out of the 50 that I had planted so yeah, some

01:10pretty big losses.

01:11What about sugarcane generally in the area?

01:14It's isolated pockets, any of the late cut or late planted stuff has suffered badly and

01:20we had three or four very, very hot days on that water while we were waiting for the river

01:24to go down so it's suffered as well.

01:26We're talking millions and millions of dollars and we really don't know how much.

01:29No, we can estimate the soybeans very quickly, they perish very quickly but it'll take a

01:37little while to fully assess the sugar damage.

01:41And I guess too the other thing is that with the sugar situation you've got a couple of

01:46years where you'll face some problems.

01:50Yeah, the benefit of a two year old cropping system is that our tonnage should be good

01:55for this year but next year it'll be severely impacted.

02:00I guess too the other thing with the water lying around, does that cause some other issues

02:04too with the mosquitoes, Ross River fever?

02:07Potentially, it's just another reason why governments have to jump into and be proactive

02:12rather than reactive.

02:13We've got to maintain these assets, these outlets and drainage systems and I'd encourage

02:18that the drainage reset program goes into stage 3 and 4 and 5.

02:22So that's where we've got to do it, we've got to get the water off the flood plain quicker

02:26while it's in good quality.

02:27And the damage bill now from the floods up to about $25 million, cropping is one of those

02:32up there as well, a number of sugar cane growers affected I would imagine.

02:36Absolutely, my counterparts on the Richmond again have taken another hit since the 2022

02:41flood and that's very disappointing from those, they did a good job to recover but

02:45yeah, they've had another hit.

02:47So with an estimated $25 million worth of damage so far, the New South Wales Government

02:51is urging, they're urging all farmers to report any damage on their farm as quickly as possible.