BEN Clifton admits the past two years have been stressful. The 32-year-old and his business partner John Cranny, 36, have been moving their pineapple-growing operation from Yeppoon to a new block at Bungundarra, near Byfield.
The move has been marred by dry weather at planting in 2010, flooding last summer and a range of other obstacles like natural flowering last winter.
However, last week the pair began harvesting the first crop on their new 161-hectare block at Bungundarra, and Mr Clifton said he was excited about the next phase of the transition.
Within a year they hope to be up to their desired production of planting 1.6 million plants a year on the Bungundarra farm - three-quarters of which will supply the fresh pineapple market, with the remaining pineapples going to the Golden Circle cannery.
Since purchasing the Bungundarra block in 2010, Mr Clifton said they had blade-ploughed about 40ha each year, followed by about the same amount of stick-raking. The block was used for grazing when they purchased it, and they are working with the previous owner on a farm-in, farm-out agreement.
"One of the biggest challenges with this block is a watercourse," Mr Clifton said.
The watercourse does not impact on the pineapple-growing areas, but cuts the main entrance to the property. Other landholders along the watercourse had tried a range of methods to ensure year-round access, from bridges to pipes, but Mr Clifton said nothing had worked.
"We've tried something different - more of a causeway setup. We have dug a metre-and-a-half deep into the silt until we hit hard clay. We have packed rock and gravel and built it back up to ground level.
"The theory is there should be no turbidity as the water flows across it and it should have no reason to wash away."
Pineapples take between 20 and 22 months to fully mature, and Mr Clifton said they were on track for their production target number.
"You need high numbers and lots of land to have a good flow of production," he said.
"We aim to harvest every week of the year to keep markets supplied the way they like to be."
Mr Clifton said farming out of the Yeppoon block and into the Bungundarra farm had been a difficult transition.
"It'd be nice to have double the amount of machinery so that you could have a set (at Yeppoon) and a set (at Bungundarra), but it's just not affordable. It's a lot of shifting machinery for the four years it will take to get us in."
Mr Clifton said the new block at Bungundarra was ideal for growing pineapples.
"It's great. It has deep sandy soil which is excellent for drainage - the most important factor for growing pines," he said.
"And it doesn't get frost here often, which is a big killer of pineapples."
Pineapples produce a plant and ratoon crop, so Mr Clifton said they were working to a three-year cycle of blade-ploughing, stick-raking and planting.
The first two years at Bungundarra have been less than ideal.
Mr Clifton admitted it had been tough on his and Mr Cranny's family life, as they spent most working weeks leaving and arriving home in the dark.
Add to this the fact that Mr Clifton welcomed his second son Jim into the world last Australia Day, during the peak production period for their farms and also in the aftermath of the Queensland floods last December-January.
"Rarely do we see our kids before we go to work.. we try to get things knocked over during the week to allow weekends for family time," he said.
During the flooding last year, Valley Syndicate Partnership - in conjunction with Tropical Pineapples, Rocky's Own Transport, and Golden Circle - tried everything to truck their pineapples to market, from hiring a barge to go from Yeppoon to Gladstone to trucking north in a bid to reach Adelaide.
However, when the highway cut at Gympie they were defeated.
"We probably lost 50 to 60pc of our peak summer crop," he said.
"We managed to work out how to get the pines across the Yeppen floodplain (on the outskirts of Rockhampton), but when Gympie flooded that cut the road.
"It was just a case of hang up the chaps and watch the fruit rot when the road was cut at Gympie and still cut at Rockhampton."
Not only did they lose crop because they couldn't transport, the farm at Bungundarra also sustained damage from heavy rainfall.
"It's certainly added more hard work. The drainage layout on this place is to cope with a couple of inches in a storm." Mr Clifton said.
"There are no runoff contingency plans you can make to stop that kind of rainfall. On-farm it was devastating to our patch layout, our farm layout and our drainage systems.
"They've all taken time to rebuild. Financially it certainly took its toll... I think farmers have to be a fairly resilient lot."
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