About Australian Canegrower

Australian Canegrower

Overview

Australian Canegrower is the official magazine of CANEGROWERS, the peak industry body representing Queensland's sugarcane growers, and describes itself on its masthead as the official magazine of Australia's sugarcane industry. Published monthly from Brisbane, it is delivered in print to CANEGROWERS members and is also available by paid subscription and in digital form. The magazine mixes industry advocacy reporting with practical farming coverage, carrying news of CANEGROWERS' campaigns, policy and legal developments affecting cane farmers, market and milling issues, grower stories from the cane districts, and a free classified advertising service for members.

The magazine is one of the principal channels through which CANEGROWERS communicates with its membership across Queensland's cane-growing regions, which run in a near-continuous strip along the state's tropical and sub-tropical coast from the New South Wales border region to Mossman in the far north. Its website presence sits inside the CANEGROWERS site, where recent editions are listed for members and older editions are released for public download six months after publication.

History

Australian Canegrower is the publishing arm of one of Australia's oldest rural industry organisations. CANEGROWERS traces its origins to 1926, when Queensland cane growers formed a united organisation to represent their interests, and the organisation is marking its centenary in 2026 under the theme "Built by Growers, Across Generations". The magazine's own volume numbering, which reached Volume 40 in 2018, Volume 42 in 2020 and Volume 44 in 2022, indicates a title whose modern sequence began in the late 1970s, and it has served as the organisation's journal of record through decades of change in the sugar industry, including deregulation of marketing arrangements, mill ownership changes, and recurring debates over reef water-quality regulation, electricity prices and cane supply agreements.

The magazine has been published in a variety of formats over its life, including a period as a fortnightly, and is catalogued by the National Library of Australia, which holds its editions as part of the national serials record. The print edition carries ISSN 0157-3039, while the online edition is catalogued under ISSN 2207-8592. Throughout its history the title has been produced in-house by CANEGROWERS in Brisbane, currently from the organisation's head office in Charlotte Street, and its pages have recorded the industry's institutional life, from district company affairs and crushing-season reports to the annual round of conferences, awards and field days.

In 2026 the magazine has a particular story to tell: the centenary of CANEGROWERS itself. The organisation's hundredth year is being marked with a centenary history program celebrating the cane-farming families who built the industry, and the magazine's covers and features through this period carry the centenary branding. That milestone underlines the unusual continuity of the title's publisher: few Australian farm organisations can point to a century of unbroken operation, and fewer still to a house magazine that has documented the whole journey from horse-drawn cane haulage to GPS-guided harvesters.

Content and Coverage

A typical issue of Australian Canegrower opens with news briefs from across the industry, followed by a CEO update and a column from the CANEGROWERS chairman. The October 2025 edition, for example, carried items on workplace safety for SafeWork Month, new CANEGROWERS education resources for schools, an inquiry examining biofuels policy, and the recognition of Queensland sugarcane under the Smartcane BMP program, alongside features on sugar storage and marketing arrangements and the people working in the industry.

Regular components of the magazine include policy updates and legal updates, which translate regulatory and contractual developments into guidance for growers; a regional round-up reporting from CANEGROWERS' district companies in centres such as Mackay, the Burdekin, Innisfail, Bundaberg and Cairns; a Queensland Sugar Limited report on marketing matters; a rainfall report; and grower profiles that document how individual families are changing their farming systems, from soil-health programs to new irrigation technology. The magazine also covers the human side of the industry, including the Women in Sugar network and its annual conference, youth and education initiatives, and the classifieds section through which members buy and sell machinery, water allocations and property, a service members can use free of charge.

Because CANEGROWERS acts as bargaining agent for growers in negotiating cane supply agreements with milling companies, the magazine also reports on those negotiations and on the organisation's submissions to government on issues such as electricity pricing, competition in sugar marketing, and environmental regulation of farming in reef catchments.

Audience and Reach

The magazine's core audience is the membership of CANEGROWERS: cane-farming families and businesses across Queensland's sugarcane districts, served by 13 local grower companies in all of the state's cane regions. Every member receives a printed copy each month as a membership benefit, and the magazine is also read by millers, harvester operators, researchers, suppliers and government officers with an interest in the sugar industry. Non-members can subscribe; CANEGROWERS' published subscription schedule for the magazine offered twelve hard copies within Australia for $190 including GST, with a twelve-month digital subscription available for $78.

The classified pages provide a useful window on the breadth of that readership, carrying advertisements from districts including Mackay, the Burdekin, Tully, Mossman, Maryborough, Bundaberg and the Tableland, for everything from cane harvesters and tractors to haulout work for the coming season. CANEGROWERS itself describes Australian Canegrower as "the industry's most trusted publication" in its own promotional material, a claim made by the publisher rather than an independently audited measure, and no audited circulation figure for the magazine is published.

Digital Presence

Australian Canegrower sits within the News & Media section of the CANEGROWERS website, canegrowers.com.au, where a magazine page lists recent editions and provides a subscription form and a media kit for advertisers. Editions become available for public download six months after publication, and a digital subscription is offered alongside the print edition. Issues for February, March and April 2026 are listed on the site, confirming the magazine's monthly publishing rhythm into 2026. The CANEGROWERS website also hosts the classifieds service, industry news and media releases, and educational material such as the "Growing Smarter" resources promoted in the magazine's pages.

Ownership and Organisation

Australian Canegrower is owned and published monthly by CANEGROWERS, a not-for-profit public company that provides a professional and cohesive voice for the members of 13 local grower companies located in all of the sugarcane regions of Queensland. The organisation is governed by growers and works as their bargaining agent with milling companies, as well as providing services including legal advice, crop insurance and marketing information. Its chief executive, quoted in the magazine's pages in 2025, is Dan Galligan. Within the magazine team, the October 2025 edition credited Robyn Devine as editor and Jane McGregor with advertising and classifieds; earlier editions in 2020 and 2022 credited Wayne Griffin as editor. The magazine's editorial contact is editor@canegrowers.com.au, published in its imprint.

Contact and Availability

Australian Canegrower is published by CANEGROWERS, Suite 701, Level 7, 201 Charlotte Street, Brisbane, Queensland 4000, with a postal address of GPO Box 1032, Brisbane, Queensland 4001. The organisation can be contacted by telephone on (07) 3864 6444. Members receive the printed magazine monthly as part of their membership; non-members can take out a subscription through the CANEGROWERS website, where past editions are also made available for download six months after publication.