Everything you wanted to know about cane payment but were too afraid to ask - information workshops for female business partners in the sugar industry : final report BSS289

Abstract

After a grower shed meeting at a Tableland cane farm, Drewe Burgess from BSES and Mick Ward from Bundaberg Sugar spent quite some time answering questions from the grower?s wife on cane payment, why harvesters cut in rounds, relative CCS, sugar pricing and general industry matters.As a result, Drewe and Mick successfully put a proposal to SRDC to support, with BSES, Bundaberg Sugar, QSL and CANEGROWERS a series of female ?Farm Business Partners? workshops on these issues in the Tableland and Innisfail-Babinda region.Workshops were run in Mareeba, Innisfail and Babinda in October 2006. Feedback from the 60 participants was excellent.As a result of the workshops, the investigators believe that female farm business partners value opportunities to increase their industry knowledge so that they can contribute more effectively to the farm business, and that just as traditional primarily male-participant activities cater for a male farmer environment (eg shed meetings), a feature of the success of these workshops was that they catered specifically for women. Hence, the workshops were designed with start and finish times to allow for children to be dropped off and picked up from school, an equal or greater number of female presenters, venues away from the (male-domain) farm shed, and workshop activities that build on women?s propensity to network and share information.