It is said farming is the only socially acceptable form of gambling. At least that’s the word in the farming circles I mix with.

Our nation’s grain growers bank it all — or at least whatever is left after a bumper-season LandCruiser purchase — on seeding paddocks while looking skyward and hoping for rain.

Many would have felt they doubled down this year, too, with fuel costs and availability adding further pressure to the challenge of getting grain into what, in some parts of the nation, remains dry ground after one of the harshest droughts on record.

Cattle producers can watch prized steers fall from premium steak prices to sausage-meat value in a matter of weeks through little fault of their own as fickle markets turn against them. I’m qualified to comment on that one.

And it seems there is plenty of gambling going on in Douglas as the local agricultural sector searches for its next winning hand now that cane is no longer such a strong play.

The problem is that it feels less like a calculated bet and more like somebody spinning the pub chocolate wheel and hoping it lands on a solution.

Everything from coffee and cut flowers to bana grass for biofuel has been thrown onto the table.

Cattle and hemp have also been well-bandied options.

I once owned a hemp fibre shirt. It was good. Very Byron Bay.