The winter edition of CRDC's magazine, Spotlight, brings you a feature on the industry's second Sustainability Report, which has been five years in the making. The report represents how important we as an industry view the impact and imprint we have on the land and society. The Australian industry continues to improve its record of stewardship of natural resources and takes this responsibility seriously, as evidenced by the production of the report, which shows we have made great improvements. Now is the time for the industry to seek more ways to continually improve.

The task now is to use the report data to set five-year targets for 2024 and 2029, along with plans to achieve those targets. The industry’s new PLANET. PEOPLE. PADDOCK. sustainability framework will guide the industry to set these ambitious targets, coordinate a whole-of-industry strategy to achieve them, and engage effectively with stakeholders on actions and progress.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us anything, it is how prepared we are to adapt to change, challenges and uncertainty. Building adaptive capacity is a core part of the CRDC Strategic Plan 2018-23, as we recognise our environment is dynamic, and we must be also. Through sound research and support for our research community, growers and industry, we aim to secure the future of our industry.

In this spirit, CRDC has been supporting research into how we manage diseases of cotton, looking to create natural suppressiveness in our soils, and treating the cause rather than the symptom. New research, some of it using many years of data collected in annual disease surveys, is building on what we already know to help growers alleviate the negative impact of disease by creating healthier soils. It all starts with the soil and we hope you enjoy reading the Spotlight feature on disease suppressive soils research.