Picking well underway in Queensland

With the choice to plant any time between August 1 and December 31 last year, cotton regions have been faced with the unfamiliar sights of young and mature crops sitting side-by-side, with some growers still irrigating while their neighbours pick. 

In many regions it was the early-planted cotton that fared the best.

In St George, the local cotton growers association president Scott Armstrong, Sharmarel, St George, said about 75 per cent of the region had been picked.

“After such a long, hot, dry season we are probably lucky to have anything to harvest at all,” he said.

“In general it’s down on previous years yield-wise… we probably call this more of an average season in line-with longterm average yields.”

He said despite the issues faced by local growers, it was a “pleasing season”, with most growers planting in the first week of October and on pickers last week. 

Dawson Valley Cotton Growers Association vice president Andrew French, Nandina, Theodore, said boll rot was an issue for the later cotton, and there had been “mixed feedback from the season”. 

“We had some growers who had early cotton off before the rain, but some growers have had all of their cotton caught in rain which is not really good,” he said.

“We’re seeing the normal issues like boll rot and all sorts of other things.

“We had good grades in that early cotton which went really well.”

It was a similar story in the Central Highlands region, with many growers who planted late on the back of chickpea crops now being faced with deciding whether to grow their rain-impacted cotton on or not. 

Early-planted cotton in the Highlands fared well, with strong yields and quality. 

The MacIntyre Valley region has just begun picking on the back of between 20mm and 80mm of rain for most growers, which came at the end of a tough season.

While open cotton was affected, the rain was needed in the region which was seeing growers running short on water heading into winter.