How beneficial to productivity are fallowing practices in coastal Mossman?

The sugarcane production system in Australia is essentially a monoculture. The option of fallowing at the end of the crop cycle prior to planting the new crop provides an opportunity for spelling the soil before the next cropping cycle, with potential benefits to sustainability. However, one element of sustainability is profitability. An important question is how productive and profitable are fallowing practices before planting. An analysis was undertaken using block productivity data from 1992 to 1996 in coastal Mossman to assess the productivity gains from crop cycles based on fallowing prior to planting compared to ploughout and immediate replanting. The key finding was that current fallowing practices are not delivering a benefit to productivity throughout the cropping cycle. Actual data, calculated on harvested hectares, show that ploughoutreplant cycles (based on a plant crop and four ratoons) give a sugar yield advantage of 0.46 tlha compared to fallow plant cycles, with the advantage increasing On an assigned area basis. The extent of ploughout-replant and the productivity consequences varied between southern and northern districts. Improvement in fallowing practices is seen as a priority for increasing the sustainability of the sugarcane production system.