Community & Business
17 June, 2025
Farming legend honoured
IT was a scene of laughter, tears and an overwhelming sense of loss, as Howe Farming Group staff and friends marked the passing of their beloved leader Dennis Howe last Tuesday.
The Mareeba identity and agricultural legend passed away on 7 June surrounded by his family, after battling prostate cancer and emphysema.
The spontaneous memorial last week was held at the main Howe Farm packing shed which Dennis built in 2002.
“It was a pretty big shed back in its time, so he was pretty proud of that one,” his son James said.
“Dad has all the staff to the one farm every Christmas for a barbecue and was always quick to pull everyone up if there was a birthday or a long-service celebration.”
James said the gathering was a way of giving staff one last thing from Dennis, a bit of a break and a rest from the weekend’s sad news.
“We re-directed the buses in the morning pick-ups – we run three coaches between Atherton and Mareeba between our various farms – and on Tuesday, they all came to the main farm and got together for a brekkie,” James said.
“There were slide shows, speeches, and some Samoan workers got up on the stage and sang a song in their language in commemoration of Dad. It was very moving.”
The reaction from staff is testament to Dennis Howe’s approach to his business.
“He was very personable,” James said. “I think a lot of people felt he spoke to them as equals; he treated staff like he treated me and my sister.
“He was very gentle for a big man, he was six foot four, just gentle in his mannerisms. He remembered personal stuff about people, especially their kids - he loves kids, and whenever staff had a new baby, he would meet them and get to know them on a personal level.
“He created a family atmosphere.”
Dennis began his farming career at his parents’ farm near Tolga. His parents had started it with a soldier’s settlement in the 1950s, growing tobacco, melons and pumpkins.
When Dennis returned home from studying civil engineering at university in the mid-70s, the family decided to stop growing tobacco and focused on potatoes, peanuts and navy beans.
Today, Howe Farming Group is a multi-property business across the Tablelands, specialising in bananas, avocados and coffee, and also growing lemons, lychees and mandarins.
It has about 450 staff and is the largest employer on the Tablelands. In 2016, Dennis was presented with the Australian Farmer of the Year Award for Excellence in Technology and was named Farming Legend of the Year.
James acknowledges his dad’s boldness and innovation but gives it a more human perspective.
“He’s come close to the brink a couple of times, with some of his risks he’s taken, but he’s always managed to pull it up and come out on top,” he said, a chuckle in his voice.
“I was young at the time, the late ‘90s, when Dad’s expansion began across the Tablelands. Within 10 years, he had purchased quite a lot of properties here.
“It was probably an opportunity unique to that time; land prices and growing practices have increased so much since. I don’t know whether we’d see the likes of Dennis Howe on the Tablelands again.”
His father also established the banana industry on the Tablelands. He began growing his cavendish, despite the naysayers, and his success triggered others, who began banana crops.
James said he can’t remember what Mareeba was like before bananas.
“It used to be seasonal crops – veggies, fruit. Transient workers of the time would come and go whereas bananas are 52 weeks of the year, and there is now that constant, steady population of workers contributing to the economy and the township in various ways,” he said.
Many workers of the Howe Faming Group had been with the business for 20 years or so. The longest-serving worker has clocked up 39 years.
Coffee was another strategic gamble that paid off, James said. Dennis had “given it a crack” in the early 1980s, but it was not until the 2000s when he perceived there was a threat of a government plan to import bananas, that he had invested seriously into the industry.
James said one of the greatest things about his father was how he was “always quite humble and brought people along with him on the journey”.
“He was very open about what he was farming, he was happy to share his mistakes and his successes with whoever was willing to listen,” he said.
“One of the most heartwarming things is that all these growers I look up to today are telling me how Dad helped them with his knowledge, to get them to the place they are now. I was surprised to learn how many there actually are.”
James knows his father is a hard act to follow but says the Howe Farming Group will “absolutely” remain a family company.
“Sadly, me and my sister (Caitlin) are now shareholders,” he said.
They will join their three aunts in the shareholder arrangement and interim CEO, Richard Calden, would “take the reins and keep everything steady, while we work out where we go from here”.
The family will be holding Dennis’ funeral service this Friday at 11am at St Thomas Church. All are welcome. A burial will take place at Atherton cemetery where his mother and father and younger brother lie.
“He was such a powerhouse – I think we all thought we’d come to the office and he’d be dead on his keyboard. I’m sure that was his plan, to die at the helm,” James said.
Instead, he was surrounded by his loving family while in palliative care at Mareeba Hospital.
“I want to say thank you to the staff, the doctors and nurses; they were wonderful,” James said.
