Australia’s cotton production tipped to hit $3.4bn in 2023

The Australian cotton industry expects to produce more than five million bales next year, despite planting woes on many flood-damaged farms in NSW.

More than five million bales are expected to stack up in favour of the cotton industry next year, with a “good proportion” of seeds planted already sold.

Farmers are only just in the early flowering stages of watering and fertilising crops but their potential has already been forecast to reach $3.4bn in gross value production for the 2022/23 season, according to the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resources Economic and Sciences (ABARES).

The crop will be ready for picking from April to May however its production outcomes are unlikely to eclipse this year’s record-breaking 5.6m bales.

Following ABARES’ December quarter agricultural commodities report, which revealed inflation and concerns of economic slowdown in America and Europe could spell dips in discretionary spending, Cotton Australia chief executive Adam Kay said the fibre always stays in demand.

Cotton Australia chief executive officer Adam Kay.

“We always sell everything we produce, we’re very lucky we’ve got a forward market for cotton with a good proportion of the crop in the ground at the moment already been sold,” he said.

While softened demand for cotton lint was seen in the second half of the year leading to significant decreases in world cotton prices, Mr Kay is hopeful that prices may increase in the coming months.

“What we are seeing now is Australian retailers and brand owners demanding Australian cotton …. People in North America and Europe also want to know where the cotton comes from, how it was produced and if the workers were paid a fair wage, so when companies use Australian cotton, they know that they’re ticking those boxes.”

The decreased output compared to 2022 can be blamed on to the remarkably wet weather experienced by farmers in southern NSW, where infrastructure and winter crops were damaged.

“You’ve got a very defined window to plant and if it gets too late the yield is badly impacted. The farmers didn’t get as much time as they wanted to plant and that really impacted the size of the national crop,” Mr Kay said.

Liverpool Plains cotton farmer John Hamparsum. Picture by Peter Lorimer

The ABARES has forecast cotton exports to reach a value of $5.1bn next year due to prior shipping delays for the 2022 crop.

About 99 per cent of crops are exported to international markets, with Australia’s number one customer Vietnam purchasing about 40 per cent of crops.

“This season is not going to be a record but it will still be around a million tonnes of fibre …. There are other crops irrigated farmers could choose to grow like soybeans or corn but the demand isn’t there for those crops, but it is there for cotton,” Mr Kay said.

Originally published as Australia’s cotton production tipped to hit $3.4bn in 2023