In 1998 when we first started Benchmarking we were not sure what we were going to find. At the time the Darling Downs In particular had suffered a number of years of rising insect pressure and insect control costs, Ingard was just being released with mixed results and insect resistance was rising rapidly. The long term economic sustainability of growing cotton was being threatened. The objective we set at the beginning of the CotBench. Benchmarking Program was &quote;to provide cotton growers with a quality analysis, as well as the motivation and support to evaluate their cotton operation's gross margin and to take action to improve their profitability and sustainability'