Oil demand helps to fuel sugar boom

Two years ago sugar prices hit rock bottom, but over the past six months prices have soared and cane land has doubled in price.

When canegrower Allan Parker, from Ayr in north Queensland’s Burdekin Valley, spoke to The Australian in April 2004 he was sitting on his veranda, watching the unprecedented sight of his neighbour ploughing up 6000 tonnes of mature cane.

“We were looking at a total collapse back then,” Parker says now.