Cotton set for new frontiers in Qld and Victoria

The industry’s peak body, Cotton Australia, sees opportunities for cotton looking genuinely bullish the Queensland Gulf country where state government water licences are being made available in the Flinders and Gilbert river systems.

So long as other crop options for the Gulf do not offer more valuable returns, Cotton Australia chief executive officer, Adam Kay says the research and technology tools which make Australia three times more productive as a cotton producer than the global industry average will find favour in northern Australia.

“But it does come down to water finding its way to the highest value crop in any given season,” he said.

More Top End cotton production in the Kimberley would also surely follow, despite the insect pressure issues of the past and logistics costs which have restrained the industry’s growth in northern Australia.

“We’ve had up to 1500ha of crop in the Kimberley - we know there’s the ability to grow modern varieties successfully in the Ord,” he said.

However, there were other challenges like distance from markets and getting access to agronomic inputs available when needed.

“There’s also the reality that other crops might be more competitive at the moment.”

“Crops like melons are already big in the north because they seem to deliver a solid return, but if there’s suddenly a melon production glut cotton might find it has a gross margin edge.”

Mr Kay said it was hard to predict the speed at which cotton would advance further south, or how far into Victoria it may be grown.

Last year’s Murray and Murrumbidgee crops generated about $300 million in lint and $40m in cottonseed returns to the South West NSW and Swan Hill (Victoria) economy - income which would have seemed absurd a decade ago.

“It’s hard to say how much it will expand, but the ginning operators have already done their homework - that research has pushed them to invest big money like $30 million at Hay,” he said.

“I think they’re anticipating bigger crops ahead, particularly going west.”

Cotton’s gradual spread from its pioneering heartland in North West NSW in the 1960s and ‘70s had repeatedly surprised onlookers and the industry itself.

Mr Kay recalled northern cotton growers wearing jumpers at early field days at Warren in Central West NSW in the 1980s arguing the region’s temperatures were too cool to produce profitable cotton yields.

“But the industry kept adapting and it’s now 700 kilometres further south these days,” he said.  

Cotton’s total cropping area typically covers a relatively restrained 500,000 hectares, but produces more than three times more fibre than the 320 million kilogram Australian wool clip which grows across more than half the nation’s farming regions.

While cotton was traditionally criticised for its irrigation water needs, water use was in line with rival summer crops such as soybeans and consumption per tonne of lint grown had actually declined 40 per cent since 2003. 

Cotton production is primarily split between 60pc in NSW and 40pc in Queensland

The coming season’s 4m bale crop is expected to be have a farmgate value of between $2 billion and $2.5b.

In regions where cotton crops are grown from Emerald in Central Queensland to the Murray Valley the crop represents between 30pc and 60pc of the gross value of agricultural production.

In a normal season the industry employs about 10,000 people.