Cotton Australia says El Niño will have less effect than it feared
By mid-March, Australia’s 1,500 cotton growers had either started to pick their 2024 crop or were planning to start in the coming weeks, according to a statement from industry representative body Cotton Australia. It said farmers were confident of “another above-average season”.
For this season, farmers in Australia have planted cotton on 480,000 hectares of land, predominantly in New South Wales and Queensland, with the Northern Territory and Western Australia also growing cotton crops.
Cotton Australia chief executive, Adam Kay, said crop results were “looking positive” considering predictions of an El Niño weather pattern.
“Our growers were expecting a long, hot and dry summer forcing a crop revision below 4 million bales,” Mr Kay said. “The rains across our largest growing areas were very welcome and now we are expecting at least 4.5 million bales which will result in more than $3.6 billion for the Australian economy, much of which will flow back into rural and regional communities.”
In recent seasons, good rainfall helped Australia produce a cotton crop of around 5.6 million bales, followed by a crop of around 5.5 million bales last season.
