HIGH winter rainfall and good soil moisture has urged more growers to plant dryland cotton, with a crop prediction of 90,000 hectares in northern NSW alone.
The large dryland planting comes as growers seek to take advantage of rebounding cotton prices and stored moisture and is set to push Australia’s total summer crop up by 21 per cent to 4.6 million tonnes.
The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resources Economics and Sciences (ABARES) issued its Australian Crop Report this week, which flagged a 15pc increase in planted area for the summer crop. However, climate modelling has some summer croppers nervous. In its latest seasonal outlooks, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) predicted a markedly hotter and drier summer period through key parts of the nation’s summer cropping belt.
Duty forecaster at the BoM Stuart Coombs said there had already been a build-up of hot air in the interior.
“We’ve seen some very hot weather impacting western Queensland and once that hot air builds up it can be very persistent,” he said. But it hasn’t deterred growers, which have flocked to cotton according to ABARES acting executive director Peter Gooday, who said cotton production was forecast to increase by 64pc in 2016–17 to around a million tonnes of cotton lint and around 1.5mt of cottonseed.
Commonwealth Bank commodity analyst Tobin Gorey said if realised, this figure would represent the second biggest Australian cotton crop on record.
Cotton Australia regional manager for Namoi, Gwydir, Walgett and Bourke, Paul Sloman, said above average rainfall in winter meant most growers had more than 1.5 metres of moisture and about 99.9pc of dryland planting was finished. Prices had also appealed, ranging from $500 to $520 a bale. B and W agronomist Matt Ryan, Mungindi, Queensland, said a lot of growers took the punt to plant dryland cotton on the back of results from previous trials.
B and W conducted trials with dryland cotton planted into a 1.5m starting moisture profile. With minimal rain, the cotton still profited better than sorghum and averaged 1.6 bales a hectare for a gross margin of about $450/ha.
Mr Ryan said so far, the cotton season in the district had been promising , but some rain now would be ideal.
Mick Brosnan, MAP Farming, Thallon, Qld, planted 700ha of Bollgard 3, Sicot 714B3F dryland cotton in early November on 1.8m of starting moisture. The crop is currently at 10 nodes and growing well. It was planted on a super single row configuration. Insect pressure hasn’t been a problem and Mr Brosnan hasn’t yet had to spray.
