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The latest damage to the two key farming commodities brings the total crop losses in Queensland state, the heart of the nation's agriculture sector, to $1.4 billion due to natural disasters in the past six weeks. The state was still reeling from a record flood that wiped out an estimated Aus$600 million in winter crops and also reduced coal exports by up to $2.5 billion, when Cyclone Yasi smashed into its far north Thursday. "This has pretty much capped it off by hitting the top half of the state when the bottom half is still trying to deal with floods," said Queensland Farmers' Federation chief Dan Galligan. Yasi, a category five storm, shredded canefields and felled banana trees as it pummelled the coast around Innisfail, just five years after major cyclone Larry wrought about $1 billion of damage to the region's crops. About 20 percent of the region's sugar crop had been destroyed by Yasi, representing about Aus$500 million in lost production from which it would take farmers several years to recover, said the industry group Canegrowers. "Those farmers must be seriously questioning whether they're going to stay in cane farming," Canegrower head Steve Greenwood said. Australia is the world's third-largest sugar exporter, shipping about 85 percent of its product to Asian markets including Japan, China and Korea in exports worth about $2 billion annually.