More water a positive for cotton and rice growers in NSW

Cotton and rice crops this season are tipped to be some of the biggest in years.

Cotton plantings will increase this year as more water is available.

Cotton plantings for the current season are tipped to be some of the best on record.

And rice production is also expected to exceed last year’s crop.

With significantly improved water allocations across all catchments, the irrigated crops, which are currently being planted or about to be, are having a revival.

Cotton Australia chief executive Adam Kay said they were expecting 370,000ha of irrigated cotton to be planted, plus dryland hectares.

It equates to 4.5 million bales to be picked at the end of the 2021-22 season — up from 2.8 million last season.

“That’s over one million tonnes of fibre, which would make jeans, socks and t-shirts for 500 million people,” Mr Kay said.

“It’ll be one of the biggest crops ever produced,” Mr Kay said.

With that in mind, Mr Kay said they were working on developing new markets and expanding existing ones.

Cotton grower from Wee Waa in NSW, Daniel Kahl said after producing just 25 per cent of their normal crop last year, they would be back to 100 per cent of their irrigated production this season.

“We will plant about 240ha of dryland cotton and 1700ha of irrigated crop,” he said.

Mr Kahl said they had 100 per cent water allocations and full on-farm storage.

Daniel Kahl in a previous cotton crop on his farm at Wee Waa in northern NSW.

Whitton cotton grower and director of Southern Cotton, Roger Commins said the season ahead was looking positive.

Mr Commins said they had a 52 per cent water allocation at this stage, but expected it would go up, particularly with rain forecast in the coming days.

“We started planting about a week ago, and this rain should mean the cotton germinates.”

He said they will plant 1200ha of cotton this year, up from 800ha last year.

Another silver lining is the price.

“Prices are excellent, you can forward sell for $620 to $630 a bale, which is better than last year.”

Meanwhile, SunRice is predicting the rice crop to be larger than last season’s 417,000 tonnes — which was close to 10-times larger than the previous crop of 45,000 tonnes.

Rice grower, Ted Hatty from Tocumwal said he didn’t have a lot of country ready for rice, as they planted more cereal crops due to the uncertainty of water allocations.

“We hope to get the cereal crops off, and plant a late rice crop,” Mr Hatty said.

“We have 44 per cent of our allocation at the moment, and it will build if we get rain, so there is optimism.”

Mr Hatty said he planted 20ha of rice last season and had only 11ha set aside for rice so far this season.

“We had some moisture left over, so we put cereals in to make sure we had something to harvest and it is paying off, the cereal crops look amazing.”