Development of a land use indicator set for the Australian cotton industry to demonstrate the sustainability impacts on soil health:

May we recommend that the follow criteria be considered when developing an indicator set for the Australian cotton industry:

General:

• Land use will probably be one of a number of environmental impact categories being assessed by an LCA practitioner as part of a sustainability assessment, each with their respective metrics, and therefore the number of land use metrics need to be practical and manageable from this perspective

• Apart from meeting specific industry requirements, the cotton industry should also use this framework and initiative to communicate its own sustainability achievements as part of regular reporting.

• Through this initiative, the Australian cotton industry should aim to stay at the forefront in this space

• This is a new sustainability space and industry is only applying a single indicator / metric for land use at present. The Australian cotton industry may therefore be afforded the leniency of adopting a conservative and phased approach whereby a limited and suitable number of indicators are implemented at first, with the intention of increasing this as practical data structures become available or put in place.

• Importantly the programme should be of direct benefit to growers to address their concerns about the state of the soil that they will be passing on the next generations

Therefore, specific recommendations:

1) Use 2 sources of data: firstly grower surveys to assess land use intensity and input intensity, and secondly soil test data for another 6 metric outcomes

2) Indicators from soil tests: soil organic carbon, ph., phosphorous, potassium, nitrogen (total, nitrates and ammonia), CEC and % sodium.

3) Soil compaction is a major concern for growers and therefore an additional ‘wet sieving’ test will give an indication of soil structure and stability – it appears that Nutrient Advantage is not able to do this but EAL Laboratory can for $60, and separate samples will have to be sent there but it is probably justified.

4) All results received form Nutrient Advantage lab and therefore provides a common methodology and able to utilise historical grower data for the database and trending – growers that we have consulted is agreeable to this.

5) Form the “soil sustainability awareness group’ SSAG with a pilot group of concerned growers to ‘test’ the programme to assess how it could be rolled out on a regional and national scale.

6) Growers are required to take soil test at those specific sites including a ‘native’ sample each year, according to a standardised procedure.

7) Results will be expressed as a % relative to the native soil, which can be benchmarked, aggregated as a single farm score, and scaled / aggregated to a regional and national level accordingly.

8) Results will be treated anonymously although will receive their specific results evaluations, along with their normal results via their agronomist / consultant.

9) CRDC / Cotton Australia or a funded project may have to cover the costs of the additional native soil test, the wet sieving test and potentially the assessments.

It is unfortunate that the above indicators will not assess soil biology / microbial life, but this is an expensive, time consuming procedure. Fortunately soil carbon is a strong driver of soil biology, and perhaps a suitable proxy indicator could be introduced for this in the future.

We have had discussions with a number of growers, who have been very supportive of the idea, and keen to join such an initiative and are willing to provide their historical soil test data. We have also consulted with relevant scientists for their views and recommendations which have been taken into consideration.