Growing sugar cane

On any given day, many of us will use and consume a product we’re all familiar with – sugar. This sweet, popular commodity is made from the sugar cane plant – a tall perennial grass that grows in subtropical and tropical regions throughout the world. Some of us use it in cooking, others have it in coffee.Food producers add it to all manner of foodstuffs on supermarket shelves for its many properties, including as a sweetener and preservative.Australia is one of these sugar cane growing regions, however New Zealand does not grow sugar cane due to the cooler climate. In Australia, sugar cane is farmed predominately in Queensland, with the sunshine state growing approximately 95% of Australia’s sugar cane crops. In 2019 the Australian sugar cane industry harvested 364,436 hectares of sugar cane, produced over 4 million tonnes of sugar and employed over 22,000 people. But how is sugar cane grown? How much water does it use? What are some of the by-products of growing sugar cane and how muc...