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Three images showing the various stages of sugar production.

Sugar cane farmer Gerard Puglisi stands in a cane paddock on his farm at Whyanbeel, north of Cairns in far north Queensland.

"From when you plant the field, you aim to harvest it about 11 or 12 months later,"
he said.

A harvester cuts through cane field while a tractor loaded with a hauling bin drives alongside to collect the harvested cane.

Cane harvester driver Alf Delorenzi smiles from inside the cabin of his harvester.

"The old fellas, they'd bloody roll in their graves if they saw us cutting like this nowadays,"
he said.

A yellow and green locomotive pulls dozens of cane bins full of harvested sugar cane along a railway lined by trees.

Bins full of harvested sugar cane arrive by rail at a sugar mill in Mossman, north of Cairns in far north Queensland.

Shredded cane is fed up a series of conveyor belts before being pressed to extract the sugar cane juice.

Bubbling sugar juice is visible through an inspection port in the side of a large boiling vat.

"We boil away the water that comes through with the cane so that we take it from 12 per cent sugar content right up to about 70 per cent,"
Mr Slattery said.

Dark, concentrated sugar syrup pours from a testing tap on the side of a syrup holding tank.

Granulated sugar taken from a conveyor belt is poured from a sampling cup into a mill worker's hand.

"For each 10-tonne bin of sugar cane that comes into the mill, we're looking at about 1.2 tonnes of sugar that goes out,"
Mr Slattery said.

A teaspoon of sugar is poured into a cup of coffee on a wooden table.

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