The Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC) Strategic Plan 2018-2023 Goal 3 calls for building the adaptive capacity of the Australian cotton industry to enable the industry to achieve its future vision. It is noted that in addition, CRDC will provide our industry stakeholders with opportunities to develop and advance innovation skills. CRDC RD&E investments will prepare Australian cotton growers for our changing environment and provide them with the skills to adapt to those changes.

In 2015/16, it was recognised that significant technological advances were unfolding in an expanding Australian Cotton industry. Likewise, previous research had identified a nexus between an available skilled, capable, competent and professional workforce to meet these emerging needs. Thus, the rationale for this project was based on the premise that a skilled and capable workforce is known to contribute to the industry's profitability, sustainability and competitiveness.

However, the extent of availability of such a workforce to the range of cotton growers (from small to more corporate enterprises) as well as to the support sector (in particular the agribusiness advisory sector) and its capacity for, and methods of, professional development were largely unknown. Equally, ways of measuring the return on investment (ROI) and impact of undertaking forms of training, education, skill development and professional development were somewhat rudimentary.

Through the CRDC Managed People Program (also representing Cotton Australia or CA), there was a demonstrated need to understand more about how skill development and professional development was undertaken. Similarly, ways of measuring impact and value for money of these initiatives, to provide objective measures of success (on-farm, in businesses and for research work) was also required. As result, a Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (MER) process was developed to measure the impact sought.