Conference Cover

The CRC contracted Queensland Cotton and Siratac Ltd. to conduct a survey on the transfer of research information into the cotton industry. This report has been produced to give a summary of the survey and the findings.

The world wide web has revolutionised the way in which people access and use technical information. Multimedia platform providers such as YouTube are increasingly being utilised by government and businesses to extend detailed messages to clients.

This project will test the potential for using the internet to communicate and extend ideas and concepts in a way that adds value to existing written industry guidelines and web tools by developing an extensive series of short documentaries covering a range of crop production, protection & best practice topics in an informative and entertaining way and host them on the internet where they can be readily accessed.

The use of internet hosted video to communicate complex ideas or market concepts has undergone extraordinary expansion in recent years due to the improved accessibility of high speed internet and the advent of easy to use hosting platforms. This form of multimedia is becoming increasingly recognised as a source of ideas and practical demonstration of all types of human skills and presents a unique and potentially cost effective opportunity for cotton industry extension.

The industry already has a considerable investment in many individual written and web software products such as the cotton production guidelines or various infoPAKS, and videos would add value to this existing repository of information. The project will not aim to compete with the digital video efforts of CSD whose material generally has a ‘hot topics’ or seasonal update emphasis, but rather focus on producing a searchable archive of production topics from pre-planting to post-harvest that a grower or advisor might use in the same way as a crop production manual. The emphasis would be on producing documentaries with a significant shelf life.

The cotton industry’s joint extension program, CottonInfo, is designed to service the commercially unmet cotton research and development information needs of growers and to support industry efforts to improve practices, productivity, competitiveness and environmental performance. The development of video content will assist CottonInfo’s communication efforts – thus supporting the CottonInfo strategic goal of making R&D information, trusted advice and specialist technical R&D knowledge readily available through a variety of different communication channels.

The expected outcome of this project is the creation of a user-friendly resource for extending cotton best production practices to growers, advisors, students and general public via an increasingly popular communication method that is currently being under-utilised by the cotton industry. It is anticipated that this extension tool could also become commonly used to communicate outcomes from industry funded projects and that researchers would be asked to nominate project highlights that may be suited to the creation of short documentaries as part of normal reporting processes.

The cotton industry has adopted a very intensive and multiform approach to human capital formation across the industry over many years. These investments cover the full gamut of activities across schools, the university and vocational systems, workforce development, training, extension services and community engagement. They are being undertaken in the context provided by the Cotton Australia Strategic Plan 2013-2018 (Enabling systems related to Human Resource Management and capacity building) and the Cotton Industry Vision 2029 (People - knowledge and Skills; Succession).

The aim of this strategy is to ensure that the cotton industry has the people with the right skills, experience and capabilities to drive industry competitiveness now and through time.

The scope of the strategy is limited to on farm capability and capacity. It considers educational and training systems and supply chain issues only to the extent that they impact skills and labour availability on-farm. It does not explicitly consider broader agricultural programs and initiatives that also benefit the cotton industry.

Workforce development (WFD) can be defined as the actions taken to improve productivity and achieve high performance by enhancing workplace organisation and increasing the capacity of workers. This has a focus on the enterprise and its performance, but also has social dimensions for individual employees, learners, other industries and regions.

Business capability and leadership skills are the most important elements of WFD strategy. They define the business and the context for all the other elements, and therefore deserve stronger emphasis in planning.

Many enterprises in the food and fibre industries do not recognise the need for high quality WFD. There is often an emphasis on training alone, with poor needs diagnosis and little consideration of where this fits in with whole-of-enterprise business needs.

Australia is a relatively small cotton producer on a global scale and is reliant on exports with over 99% of ginned cotton exported. It is the third largest exporter of cotton globally. Trading conditions for Australian growers have fluctuated over the past five years due to increased volatility on the global cotton market. Erratic swings on global prices, prolonged drought conditions and floods have also affected revenue. These factors pushed up the cost of growing cotton and forced smaller, less-viable operators out of the industry. There are between 800 and 1,200 cotton farms in Australia depending on seasonal conditions.

Individual cotton farms are generally small employers. Cotton growers employ an average of 6.6 people per farm. By this measure, around 8,000 people were employed on farm with 4 500 of those located in NSW and 3 500 located in QLD.

The industry has labour and skills shortages across low and higher skilled categories. Local labour is difficult to source, particularly post drought (expansion phase). A poor season(s) in one region will see a few essential staff retained as those employees and, often, family members taking on an increasing burden of work. In another region a good season will see a return to significant labour and skills gaps.

Farm production now utilises far more technology and complex machinery to drive productivity growth, and these changes have placed a higher value on technical skills, which is putting upward pressure on wages.

The once pyramid-shaped workforce comprising owners and a mass of low level operators is becoming diamond in shape as technology and automation continues to remove low-skilled job roles and creates a need for a new breed of skilled workers or technicians. Contractors therefore make up a significant proportion of the cotton industry workforce.

While these projections signal challenges, growers will still be aiming, to produce the highest yielding crop allowable at the time with the labour force economically allowable. This will mean working smarter with a smaller number, though more highly skilled workers.

Archived soil samples from 0-30 cm that had been collected between the 1993 and 2013 from seven different experiments run by the NSW Department of Primary Industries in Queensland and New South Wales were analysed for soil C, N and P. These soils were taken from plots with differing soil management and crop rotation histories. This scholarship was aimed at the investigation of soil stoichiometric relationships of soil C, N and P to test the hypothesis that there is a potential imbalance in soil C:N:P ratios under differing soil management and crop rotations that may inhibit carbon sequestration. The soil archives were collected from the Narrabri storage facility and ground on site in preparation for laboratory analysis at the ANU. The balance of the scholarship time was spent at Australian Cotton Research Institute in Narrabri, where the researcher was exposed to the following laboratory methods that were carried out following an on-site irrigation sequence for the plots C1 and D1:

 Total suspended solids,

 Saturated soil pastes

 Centrifuging soil pastes

 Determination of chloride in water by Sherwood Chloride Analyser model 926 (coulometric method)

 EC and pH measures

 Determination of Na, K, Ca, and Mg in water by flame atomic absorption spectroscopy.

Attendance at several cotton related seminars and spent time in the field learning about and assisting with related projects taking place at the research station.

Effects on the stoichiometric ratios of cotton cropping soils have been varied throughout the treatments over the plots. At tthat time of analysis, the most obvious relationship that was found was between the dryland and irrigated plot soil Carbon storage due to Nitrogen addition. The addition of Nitrogen to dryland soils has been shown to have much less of an effect on soil Carbon storage levels than under an irrigated system. This project aligns with strategic aims in Best Practice through sustainable soil management and providing solutions for an increase in crop productivity yield per hectare through improving resource efficiency and also building workforce capacity by providing training and support for students undertaking tertiary study.

The 6th World Cotton Conference was held in May 2016 in Goiania, Brazil. The conference is held every four years and was attended by 400 people from 40 countries. The conference was held over five days and had eleven scientific themes. Nine Australian researchers presented during the conference.

A wide range of topics were discussed although it was not possible to attend all sessions. Some snippets of interest include;

 there were no irrigation water use efficiency presentations, although occasional questions to speakers,

 One researcher suggested the establishment on an international cotton research centre like CGIAR.

 Several presentations on extension challenges ranging from modern countries like Australia to India/Africa with vast numbers of poor farmers.

 Paper on the variability of fibre quality in the plant and how HVI does not explain all the variance.

 Couple of interesting studies on the role of women in cotton farming and sustainable fibres eg South America FAO study.

 Excellent paper on motes and cotton seed linters and how much extra value could be unlocked here.

 Considerable discussion around resistance management for transgenic crops and the global variance. Knowledge gaps such as VIP3A efficacy, planting windows, non host crops.

 A former Cotton CRC PhD student now working in Argentina presented research on radiation impacts on flowering.

 Cotton Inc – Global LCA research would be of interest to people in this discipline. There appears to be no LCA research on man made fibres. Social LCA is a growing science.

 The rise of China and challenges it faces. China has 47 measures of sustainability and a target of zero growth in fertiliser and pesticide use. A lot of use of transplanting and plastic films. Growing “home invented” mechanisation. Growth in multidisciplinary sciences.

 There were a heap of papers on cotton genetics and breeding

 Soil changes over time. eg Impact of high summer temperatures on bare fallows on soil biology.

 Cotton Cultivated website of Cotton Inc. Webcasts. Plant Management links.

The conference tour was to the nearby Embrapa Research Station. Embrapa appears to have had a very significant impact on Brazilian agriculture. It has 47 research centres. The main cotton research centre was nowhere near the major cotton producing regions as the regional distribution of cotton in Brazil has changed over time. The centre we visited was a major soybean facility, but had some rice and cotton experiments. There seem to be a strong desire to integrate cotton into the soybean facility and farming system. This is definitely an R&D provider worth monitoring. https://www.embrapa.br/en/international.

Growers within the Mungindi Cropping Group felt there was a need to identify profitable summer crop options to be grown under dryland conditions in the western growing regions. Whilst winter crop rotations are being used to assist in the reduction of issues such as crown rot and root leision nematode the addition of a summer crop could further benefit the farming system from both a sustainability and profitability point of view.

Dryland growers are looking to adjust planting dates to better utilise planting opportunities and available soil moisture and minimise the negative impacts of peak flowering during extreme heat events. Greater understanding of the physiological development of dryland cotton, especially BG3 under different row configurations will enable growers to make better management decisions to maximise returns.

Pupae busting is a major hurdle to the adoption of dryland cotton. It’s a major expense, causing significant moisture loss, which minimises further opportunity cropping for dryland growers. The expansion of dryland cotton is significantly influenced by the need to pupae bust. Ratoon cotton can cause major issues in subsequent crop rotations.

The Cotton Info team undertakes extension and communication for the cotton industry.The team are from different organisations with a geographically spread. Information about activities was being captured via phone meetings without being systematically captured or recorded. This limited the capacity to report, review and evaluate the full activities and impact of the group.

The YourDATA M&E platform is a web-based application that provides a central data collection point for projects. By allowing team members to input raw data, view real-time graphical reports, and export collated data to spreadsheets, at any time and from anywhere (http://dev.couttsjr.com.au/yourdata/), it can be particularly tailored to collect and collate M&E data across regions, individuals and projects to allow reporting against milestones and strategic objectives.

For the first time, engagement, activity, output and impact data from the Cotton Info Team has been able to be captured in real time and collated for on-going improvement and reporting purposes. This is a significant jump in being able to demonstrate the role and value of the cotton team activities and clearly demonstrate the extent to which they are supporting the RD&E process and assisting industry to maximise the take up of new research, improved management practices and obtain productivity, profitability, environmental and social benefits.

This provides cotton growers and other stakeholders with the confidence they need that their levies and funding being used for this purpose is an effective investment. The process and system is flexible, easy to use and delivers timely information needed for decision-making about this significant development and extension delivery program to the cotton industry.

This annual survey project measures the impacts and outcomes of research and production critical to the Australian cotton industry. Crop Consultants Australia (CCA) has collected quantitative and qualitative data for the industry since the early 1990s. The data helps the industry to better understand the impact of research and extension, technology adoption, farming practices and product usage as well as identifying new opportunities.

The project collected and provided quality quantitative and qualitative data of good geographical representation (coverage of Australia’s cotton production area) relating to economic, environmental and social factors of Australia’s cotton industry. The data collected each year and provided to CRDC is able to be compared with data from other years to determine progress on various issues and changes in management practices.

The data provided to CRDC is utilised by industry for benchmarking, trending and research purposes.