Cattle producers embrace cotton in north west Qld as planting commences

Radford Agriculture director and agronomist Chris Radford said what started as an idea three years ago had progressed to an industry in its infancy.

"We have seen both irrigated and dryland cotton, however dryland cotton is where the true potential is in the north, but there have been irrigated crops grown around Julia Creek for the last three years at Lorraine Station, Silver Hills and Etta Plains," Mr Radford said.

Producers are expected to start planting in the next three weeks as the monsoonal weather commences.

"There are bits and pieces that have been planted at the beginning of the wet, but we believe there will be an increase in plantings over the next three weeks. It has been a steady start in some areas of the north west," Mr Radford said.

"The variety that most growers are planting is Bollgard 3 variety 748.

"There have been a variety of trials every year in the north, through CSD variety trials and also on-farm strip trials to see what works best.

"We've had mixed results across mixed seasons and throughout very different planting times so we're still trying to get a good handle on it at this point."

Mr Radford said more producers were stepping into cotton, with two new substantial cotton growers in North Queensland that he knew of.

"More people and companies are beginning to take up cropping, mainly starting with feed for cattle and then progressing into cotton," he said.

"We are mindful that for cotton to work we need to have the whole system in place to work as a whole, so it's vital that we have other crops in the rotation. We've been growing chickpeas, mungbeans and sorghum now, with trials in place this year for sesame as well.

"Growers have successfully been growing chickpeas, forage sorghum and cotton over the past few years. As markets open up there will be opportunities with grain sorghum, corn and silage."

But the big question is, what is the yield like? Mr Radford said last year irrigated and dryland cotton hit its targets.

"Some irrigated cotton was going 12 bales and some dryland going five bales. It's just getting the consistency across the whole areas that has been the hard part so far," he said.

"This upcoming season we're hoping for 12 bale average on the irrigated and will be happy with anything over three as an average across the dryland, but hoping for four to five average.

"Pest and disease, in reality, hasn't been as bad as we'd feared when we first came up here.

"There is nothing too exotic that we aren't dealing with in other areas.

"Grasshoppers seem to be the main early season pest with bad mirid numbers in some years, being followed by Spodoptera litura and heliothis from then on."

With any cropping practices comes challenges and for those in the north west it is logistics and freight.

"This biggest issue growers are facing is the logistics, and getting their processes in place in order to get the job done. You really can't afford to miss any opportunities and the sporadic and aggressive nature of the weather complicates this.

"There are large distances from infrastructure and cropping land, so this creates issues when trying to plant and spray.

"These issues are not specific to the north west, but mature growing areas have dealt with these issues over many years to make getting the job done easier They also have smaller areas to cover that don't necessarily get cut off by the wet season for months at a time.

"The freight component of the gross margin is the worst part of producing anything in north west Queensland, whether it's mining, livestock or cropping.

"As logistics get a bit more refined, we can reduce this cost as we backload fertilisers from port at the same time as delivering product and things like that.

"We will need better infrastructure across the region, things like a cotton gin or feedlots that are in the area where we can value add will be needed really in order for this to happen, and lessen the freight burden. But we're confident that it will all happen in time."