Jimbour district cotton grower Jamie Grant was recognised recently by the Darling Downs Cotton Growers Inc, with the ‘Service to Industry Award for 2017’.
Jame, along with wife Susie, farm 2000 hectares on back soil plains at Kielli.
He has long been recognised throughout the wider industry as an innovative cotton grower and is a long term participant in the Jimbour Brigalow Flood Plain Group.
Jamie believes that growing quality cotton is paramount.
He has always been proactive and strives to continuously improve spray applications, while at the same time willing to to go out of his way to assist and support the industry.
The Grant’s farming operation is an entirely dryland cotton operation, and half the country is planted to cotton while the balance is planted to French White Millet as a cover crop crop,rotating his country every second year.
“When the French White Millet comes to a head we spray it and it collapses as mulch and it locks any sub soil moisture,” Jamie said.
In 2006 Jamie was recognised as the AgriRisk Innovative Grower of the Year, which recognises a grower who demonstrates a high degree of innovation in one aspect of production.
He manages his farm with innovation placed at its highest level from farming to machinery, including using extensive modification of his cotton picker adapted fro six 60cm rows on 9 metres.
The Grants regularly open their Kielli to growers, researchers and engineers from Australia and overseas, and Jamie regularly shares his knowledge with the cotton community to keep the industry innovative and vibrant.
Best management practices are adhered to on Kielli, and staff encouraged to engage in good OH&S policies.
Jamie has achieved myBMP accreditation and one of the few growers on the Darling Downs to become Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) accredited.
The BCI intiative exists to make global cotton production better for the people who produce it, better for the environment it grows in, and better for the sector’s future, by developing it as a sustainable mainstream commodity.
It is a world recognised holistic approach to sustainable cotton production which covers all three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social and economic, and the cotton is traced back to the grower..
“BCU has it own standards and in Australia the myBMP is of the highest standard and by being BCU accredited our cotton can be completely traced back to the farmer,”Jamie said.
Jamie was one of the first cotton farmers to introduce round baler cotton pickers.
As such, he came up with a way top tie round bales on a flat top trailer approved by the Department of Transport, and it is now known at the ‘Grant tie down strap’.
Jamie and Susie have endured five very dry years, and said he is looking for two falls of a least 75mm to give enough sub-soil moisture to plan this season.
“Our sub-soil reserves have just run out getting our crops through during these dry years”, he said.