What Makes Our Australian Cotton Special

There’s something special about Australian cotton.

Perhaps it’s that Australian cotton farmers are pioneers of their industry, using some of the most innovative technologies available worldwide. Perhaps it’s their willingness to lend a helping hand, rather than compete with neighbouring farms. Or maybe, it’s their hardworking nature, genuine spirit and dedication to the land they farm on.

We’ve known Australian cotton is special for quite some time. Thanks to our partnership with Oritain, we can scientifically trace each and every fibre from our men’s and women’s Heritage Sweats back to an Australian farm. With bushfires devastating land and communities across the country, the support for Australian farmers is now more important than ever.

We recently visited one of our cotton farms near Narrabri, New South Wales, and spoke to Farm Manager Adam to get a closer look at the cotton farming process.

“I’m the manager of this farm – I run all day-to-day operations on production. That includes cotton production and our rotation crops.”

“A farm like this currently employs about 18 people who are all locals. The ginning [cotton processing] side of the business employs about 10 people who are local too. For every job created here on the farm there’s a multiplier effect in town.”

Can you tell us a little bit about the farming process?

“The cotton farming process really begins at the end of the season that we’ve just had…

We grow a rotation crop in between our summer crops. On conclusion of harvest of the previous cotton crop, we analyse all the data that’s come off a particular field.

We’ll look at fibre quality, yield and evaluate the soil health after the crop through soil sampling. We’ll also look at satellite images of that crop throughout the season. All of this sets us up for the next season. We plant our cotton in September and harvest in April, so during summer we’re busy growing the crop.”

What makes Australian cotton special?

“From very early on we’ve developed varieties that are specific to Australia and Australian production zones, and we’re getting the best out of those plants for those chosen areas. We haven’t brought in varieties from other production countries, we’ve really specialised in that on a local level. That means we grow some of the world’s highest quality cotton with equally high yields.”

Why is it important for people to know where their cotton comes from?

“I think provenance in any agriculture industry is playing a bigger and bigger role over time. People like to know the story behind their food and the fibre, or the clothes they’re wearing. Social media has shrunk the world a lot, and people are accountable now. People want to know that food or fibre is being produced responsibly.”

“We open our farms to anyone who’s interested – they see how we’re producing the crop, they see it’s done in an environmentally friendly and responsible way. We’re seeing improvements in our yields on soil that’s been cropped for the last 60-70 years; the fact that we’re seeing those year-on-year improvements [means that] our soil health is improving.”

How does science support the Australian cotton industry?

“Science and technology plays a massive part in the cotton industry. I think it’s the only agricultural industry that’s seen 3-4% year-on-year yield increases over the last 15 years – and that all comes back to the research we’ve done in Australia.

Australian producers have the world’s highest yield – three times higher than than the world average. That’s purely come from our research, development and growers taking on [better] management practices that we have exposure to.”

What role does technology play in the cotton farming process?

“We use a fair bit of technology through the growing season, including remote sensing with satellite and drone images. We also use probes in the soil that read the moisture at every 10cm interval down to a metre, and all that information is fed back to our smartphones or laptops so that we can evaluate exactly where the crop root system is at any stage.”

“We stamp each cotton bale with a timestamp and GPS location as it’s picked in the field. We can actually correlate that information right through from the ginning process to the bale that’s produced at the other end of the gin. So, when that bale is analysed for that fibre quality, if there is a particular issue we can follow that right back and pinpoint it to an area in the paddock.”

How has technology helped to increase your water efficiency over the years?

“We have access to technologies that we couldn’t have 20 years ago, like the satellite imagery and soil probes that are connected to our smartphones and laptops. This gives us real-time data of how much water the plant is actually using, per hour, per day, per week.”

“Some of those algorithms are married into weather forecasts now, so we can look at how the water use may play out if we’re going to have a week of 40-degree weather.”

How do you work together with other Australian cotton farmers?

“[Industry collaboration] plays a huge role in how we’re conducting and evolving management practices over time. It’s certainly crucial to the way the industry’s growing.

We don’t compete with the neighbours over the fence, we work as a whole to innovate and solve problems. If someone is doing something a little bit differently and getting a great result, it’s welcomed by everyone to have a look and see if they can replicate it or adapt to suit practices on their farm.”

Country Road is proud to support Australian farms that are members of the Better Cotton Initiative.

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