AUSTRALIA: Record Crop Plantings for 2010/11 season.
The Australian 2010/11 cotton crop is setting new heights for the industry. This season is fast shaping up to see the biggest Australian cotton crop ever, with over 665,000 hectares planted to date - a vast increase on last year’s total planting of 211,000 hectares.
Egytex News Desk
Source: www.cottonaustralia.com
Other key statistics are that around 260,000 hectares of this year’s crop is dryland production and the previous largest crop of 561,500 hectares was recorded in 1998/99.
This summer, cotton will stretch from Queensland through northern NSW all the way down to the Murrumbidgee valley in southern NSW.
Cotton Australia CEO, Adam Kay, says after a decade of drought, rain and strong international prices are driving a long-overdue Australian cotton resurgence.
“When you add a wet start with the highest price for cotton since the 1860’S, then you can see why we are on track for a record Australian cotton harvest.”
Mr Kay says the long term investment by the cotton industry into R&D can appear in ways that can’t be seen.
“Growers are telling us that without the availability of GM cotton varieties, the weeds this year would be so out of control you wouldn’t just be hard pressed to see the cotton for the weeds, you’d be lucky to find the house.
“This technology has helped the Australian cotton industry reduce our chemical usage by around 90% over the last decade.”
Source: www.cottonaustralia.com
From the Egytex news archive, first published on 13 December 2010. Figures and names are as reported at the time.
