Farm assessment of productivity limits in the wet tropics : SRDC Final report BSS159

Abstract

There is an ongoing concern in the wet tropics over productivity levels, particularly with regard to low CCS. Previously, productivity trends within the region have been assessed utilising mill area statistics (Smith, 1991; Hurney, 1995; Leslie and Wilson, 1996). These studies indicate there has been a negative trend for CCS over the last 30 years in the wet tropics. Consequently, sugar yields have remained relatively static during the same period despite an increase in cane yield and, therefore, economic viability has been adversely affected.While mill area statistics can be of value in assessing broad issues, they suffer from the disadvantage that problem definition may be limited because causal factors can be confounded. This project has assessed productivity trends at the farm and district level rather than mill level. It was considered that assessment of production functions at this level rather than the mill level may provide a clearer understanding of factors influencing productivity, particularly CCS trends. The concept was to focus on high performance farms to determine if there were exceptions to general productivity trends. If exceptions could be identified, detailed evaluation of this group might assist in a better definition of the problem, diagnosis of causes and may even identify some solutions to factors influencing productivity.