August 2007
Kevin Mann joins BDTNRM Board
By Terry Butts
High profile Home Hill canegrower Kevin Mann’s appointment to
the Burdekin Dry Tropics Board of Directors comes at a time when
scientists and land users are sometimes (if not often) in
disagreement about modern land management techniques. Kevin Mann is
just the right person to build that bridge of
understanding.
After 16 years with Queensland Canegrowers, and the past six as
chairman of Inkerman Canegrowers, Kevin Mann has seen change in an
industry that has survived a lot of serious challenges both on the
domestic and overseas front. Fluctuating land and sugar prices,
quite apart from the cyclones, droughts and other
factors, have impacted and tested the resilience of
cane growers.
Yet, inexorably in the 30 years he has been a farmer, the cane
growing area of the Burdekin has actually doubled. There are
several reasons, least of which involves the critical use and
management of water and that is an area, where Kevin Mann has state
wide and national, recognition.
Kevin Mann was born on the family cane farm at Home Hill, and apart
from a six year stint at school teaching and a working holiday in
the UK back in the late 1970s, he’s been there ever since. In
partnership with his brother David, they have been working,
driving, planting, harvesting, irrigating and performing all the
other hand blistering chores that are
part of the daily ritual for the man on the land. Yet he still
found time for board meetings, which he obviously took very
seriously.
So
serious was his concern for water management and salinity he once
took off for Swan Hill in Victoria to witness first hand how the
farmers handled the problems of the Murray Darling. He came back
and implemented what is termed conjunctive use of water, a method
he had learned from the Victorians, and encouraged his neighbours
and colleagues to do the same. It is basically blending one third
bore water with river water, recycling it, and more importantly
controlling its flow and distribution.
While Kevin Mann unashamedly radiates a deep passion for cane
farming, there is little doubt he enjoyed teaching. “I always
wanted to do the manual things at school, woodwork and metal work,
but in those days at All Soul’s School in Charters Towers
they were not subjects continued into years 11 and 12.” He
taught the full range of subjects especially when posted to
Hughenden in 1976 where in fact he had his first association with
Mark Stoneman, later the National Party member for Burdekin, and
co-incidentally the current chair of BDTNRM.
It was
his teaching that indirectly resulted in his marriage to Amanda,
mother of their son Max.
“I
was 27 and back living in the Burdekin, a few of the ex-students
turned 18 so I decided it might be best to spend my social time and
weekends away in Charters Towers. I used to stay at the Rix Hotel
where Amanda was the licensee. She is the daughter of a cattle and
sheep grazier from Wandoan area north of Dalby and has a rural
background.” So the social visits became more regular and
then, after a trip down the aisle, somewhat more
permanent.
Kevin
recalls his first two seasons of cane farming were
“good” but also remembers the tough times, particularly
in the five year period from 1982 when interest rates went through
the roof, no one was buying and the sugar price dropped to 2 cents
a pound. By comparison last year’s price was as high as 19
cents a pound, a price he says was influenced by the futures market
that indicated a world shortage of sugar. But it was not to be,
India came back on the international market after a three year
drought and today’s sugar price hovers around 10cents per
pound.
He says
most of the changes in the cane growing industry have been driven
by labour costs and shortage. Actual harvesting and machinery
hasn’t changed since the eighties but methods of planting
have become more automated. He firmly believes the Burdekin land is
best utilised for cane growing and sugar farming is still viable in
the Burdekin
“It
is a definite goer.”
Just like the Mann himself.