WATER may be cotton's ongoing long term challenge, but a chronic shortage of labour is also impacting on the growth of the industry.
Macintyre Valley cotton grower Brendan Griffiths said labour had been the limiting factor on the size of this year's crop, particularly during the irrigation phase when countless syphon hoses need to be started and stopped during the growing season.
"The lack of labour really has created a bottleneck in terms of production," Mr Griffiths said.
"It meant some areas were not planted because growers could not manage increased areas without the labour being available. Irrigation was certainly the big one, but in some cases it also applied to machine operators."
Despite the labour shortage, this year's Macintyre Valley crop is a beauty, and likely to be about two bales above the region's long term production average.
Even more exciting is that cotton prices are also at near record levels, trading in the mid to high-$900/bale range and even nudging close to a $1000/bale.
Even more exciting is that cotton prices are also at near record levels, trading in the mid to high-$900/bale range and even nudging close to a $1000/bale.
"The industry certainly needs it," Mr Giffiths said.
"These are prices not seen since the 2011-12 season and come on the back of some not so good years during the drought."
Mr Griffiths, who also has the agronomy business DataAg and lectures on cotton production at the University of New England, said the shortage of labour would accelerate the adoption of labour reduction technolgies.
"We're already seeing the adoption of driverless machines and other labour saving automations," he said.
"There will also be an increase in the use of other strategies including bankless irrigation, which removes the labour intensive job of starting syphon hoses."
Mr Griffiths said the other major challenge was the significant increases in input costs, particularly for fertilisers, chemicals and fuel.
The 220 hectare Shannon crop was irrigated eight times during a low water use year, where only 5.5 megalitres/ha of in-crop water was applied. Only one spray was required on the crop to combat sucking insects early in the season.
The fibre will be processed at Carrington Cotton at Goondiwindi. Each of the distinct yellow round bales seen lined up in a picked cotton field produce about 4.4 bales of ginned cotton.
"It is certainly great to be at the end of a season with full storages and strong prices," Mr Griffiths said. "Next season should be a repeat of this year in terms of the area planted, but it could increase if the labour is available."
Last year only 2.8m bales were produced, but nothing like the disastrous 2019-20 drought affected season when less than 590,000 bales were recorded.
This year's crop is estimated by Cotton Australia to be about 5.67 million bales, although a final figure will not be known until all of the fibre has been harvested and processed. The potential value of Australia's 2021-22 cotton crop in the vicinity of $4.5 billion.
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