Outback council hopes sorghum crop will reduce pressure on ratepayers

Richmond Shire Council backs sorghum as higher-return alternative to grazing Mon 1 Jun 2026 at 11:35am An outback Queensland council is growing its own crops to help pay for a more livable community for local ratepayers. The Richmond Shire Council is anticipating its coffers will soon be boosted by up to $500,000, depending on the profit made by this season's sorghum crop growing on the town common. Thirteen hundred hectares of grain sorghum was sown by the local council in January on a parcel of state-owned land at Maxwelton, about 100 kilometres east of Julia Creek in north-west Queensland. The plot in the tiny outback town is being leased to the Richmond Shire Council from the Queensland government. "We want a cash crop," Mayor John Wharton said. "It's about building income streams for our community." "If we make half a million dollars out of this and we say to our community: 'Well, we've got some spare cash, let's give everyone in Richmond free child care', I reckon they'll flock to our community." This is the second year the council has grown a crop to make extra cash. In 2025, it harvested 1,000 tonnes of chickpeas from the same plot of land. That netted the Richmond Shire Council a tidy $300,000 profit. "It was a great start, and we really want to see this industry grow," Cr Wharton said. Growing crops and communities Boosting the council's bottom line is not the only driving force behind the burgeoning cropping industry in Queensland's far north-west. Richmond is struggling with the same issues facing many other outback communities: a small ratepayer base and a huge footprint of land to look after. The town is home to about 600 people, but the shire council covers an area of more than 26,000 square kilometres. "My goal is to stop the rates rising in Richmond," Cr Wharton said. "I want income streams like this that I don't have to rate out people out of our community." The long-serving mayor, who has been in the job for 28 years, has experienced the highs and lows of life in an outback town built on the back of the beef industry. "You know, when I was growing up, there'd be three or four people working on the property," he said. "Now it's a helicopter and mum and dad go out and draft the cattle, you know? So the jobs are starting to drift away from the cattle industry." "These sorts of things [crops] bring jobs. "Even the harvesting contractor, the planting contractor all bring money to our community. "They buy fuel. They buy food. They buy beer!" Crops could help secure the town's future Agronomist Angus Dalgliesh is providing expertise to the Richmond Shire Council and is optimistic about the future of dryland cropping in the region. "The fact that we can value-add to a pre-existing industry like the livestock industry up here, and on the side maybe grow a grain crop for a bit of a cash injection along the way, I think there's a huge future ahead of cropping," Mr Dalgliesh said. The state government has helped fund two 2,000-tonne silos at Maxwelton, with construction on a third silo underway. The infrastructure means grain can be stored locally before being railed or trucked east. The Richmond Shire Council has worked closely with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, providing data around prices paid per hectare, and the cost of spraying, clearing and harvesting. Assessing the figures behind growing a cash crop has attracted the attention of other local governments, including the Longreach Regional Council. "If you look at Longreach Regional Council, we have a budget of $55 million, and a rate base of about 12 million [dollars]," Mayor Tony Rayner said. "There's a severe gap between the rate base and what it costs to deliver the services, so anything that can help enhance that, we'd look at." Bigger returns expected this season Richmond Mayor John Wharton has been up-front about the modest profit from the 2025 chickpea crop. "Because mainly a lot of it went into the development of the land, so this year we didn't have to plough out at all, we just planted straight into the old dead chickpeas," he said. "We're looking at probably half the cost this time around." A six-figure profit from the first season, after costs, was still a welcome cash injection for the Richmond Shire Council. Agisting cattle on the same parcel of land previously earned it less than $30,000. "The return on investment is a lot higher than what it is for grazing," Longreach Mayor Tony Rayner said. "And so for our agricultural sector that goes through some challenging times, it could be another option, another diversification." Richmond Mayor John Wharton believed local governments everywhere should be looking for their own opportunities to make more money. "We're in the game of trying it for other producers,"Cr Wharton said. "We'd rather give it a shot as the local government, and we were confident that it was going to do well, and it is doing well, so let's see how it all pans out." Watch ABC TV's Landline at 12:30pm AEST on Sunday or stream anytime on ABC iview.