DRYLAND cotton harvest has kicked off across northern NSW yet very few pickers would have left the shed.
After a scorching hot summer with over 50 days exceeding 35 degree heat in Moree, dryland cotton crops across the north suffered.
Cotton Seed Distributors extension and development officer, Rob Eveleigh, Wee Waa, said due to severe heat in the north, dryland cotton bolls are smaller and the lint isn’t readily accessible for pickers to pick.
This has meant every cotton stripper in the district would be in the paddock by now, as they’re more suitable to harvest low yielding dryland crops.
Logistically, this season will be tough for northern growers as Mr Eveleigh said most would have anticipated to harvest their cotton with pickers.
In order to preserve yield though, most have now decided to harvest their dryland crops with strippers, which could make sourcing contractors and machines difficult.
WIth one of the largest dryland cotton crops planted in their area this year, BMC Partnership, Moree, had their 12 metre front picker assembled in February to fill a suspected high order of picking contracts.
After the heatwave caused severe plant stress throughout the district though, BMC downsized their picker back to a normal irrigation configuration of 40 inch row spacings as demand for their cotton stripper was overriding picker work in the dryland cotton.
BMC is a multi purpose cotton business that contracts to areas including Moree, Goondiwindi, Mungindi and Burren Junction.
BMC managing director, Ross Munro, Moree said this year, a lot of growers were opting to harvest their dryland cotton using cotton strippers as opposed to pickers to try and preserve as much of their yield as possible.
During the season last year, Mr Munro said they harvested a lot of dryland cotton with pickers as it was a much higher yielding season.
This year, he said he’s had clients who intended to pick their dryland cotton but have decided to strip it at the last minute after losing yield potential due to the heat wave.
Mr Munro said strippers were in high demand throughout the entire region that had been affected by the severe heat during January and February.
Because a stripper removes everything from a cotton plant, including sticks and leaves, discounts can occur if bales aren’t properly cleaned.
Mr Eveleigh said dryland crops need to defoliated correctly to ensure the removal of all green material from the crop to save producers from discounts.
With recent rain in the north, growers have now been struggling with regrowth, which Mr Eveleigh said was making the defoliation and cleaning process much harder.
“It’s difficult to try and stop regrowth, producers just have to keep defoliating which can be very expensive,” he said.
While leaf in bales can cause grower discounts, Mr Eveleigh said it would still be more profitable for growers to use a stripper on a low yielding dryland crop as opposed to a picker.
“More yield will pay for the increased discount,” he said.
“You might get 20 to 25 per cent more cotton off by stripping it.”
Cotton Compass director, Pete Johnson said cotton prices have held between $530 to $550 a bale for the last couple of weeks.
With a lot of US cotton selling aggressively into export markets now, Mr Johnson said the amount of cotton Australia has to compete with at harvest time is becoming less and less.
“That should assist us in finding markets,” he said.
Mr Johnson said prices are expected to stay firm over harvest and with plenty of crop still not sold, farmers should be able to capitalise on the good prices.