These days the annual cotton harvest is a high-tech one-man job as the industry emerges from drought - pruned back but poised for a string of bountiful crops.
After two good years of rain, Australia is expected to produce 4.8 million bales this year - a record yield eight times that at the peak of the drought and set to make us the world's second-biggest cotton exporter after the United States, surpassing India.
At Auscott Ltd, one of the country's biggest producers, near Wee Waa in north-west NSW, the property is dotted with 9000 cheese wheel formations known as round modules - a new picking technique that has slashed the need for labour in an industry badly short of staff.
Spindles on a mechanical picker pluck cotton, suck it into a basket and press it into a plastic-wrapped round bale. The technology emerged three years ago, replacing larger rectangular bales, and has since been adopted by about 80 per cent of growers.
"They are quite self-contained very easy to handle - they allow 1½ people to do the job of six," said P.J. Gileppa, Auscott's manager of grower services. "You don't have to worry about looking for hired help, so you can start picking a lot earlier."
With the harvest complete, the Auscott gins hum day and night to remove dirt, seeds and sticks to produce a clean bale of cotton for export, mostly to China.
Fickle prices driven by oversupply have hurt some producers - cotton now sells for about $380 a bale, down from an average of $500 last year.
"Everything happens in cycles: the market, the weather … the price is volatile on the world market, but not much can be done about it," said Mr Gileppa, who predicts three to five good harvests to come.
In Wee Waa, however, where fortunes are tied to the industry, the drought is not yet a distant memory. A study released last month found that while business turnover had increased by 77 per cent since its lowest point in 2008, employment levels in small businesses had not. And while the expansion of mining had reversed a population decline, a number of vendors, including two beauticians and a tyre business, were yet to return.
The owner of the Wee Waa Hot Bread Shop, Merredith Jackson, said the loss of fellow traders still hurt. "Local people have to go further afield for those services, and they often say 'I'll go for the day and have lunch and do my groceries'. It does take money away from the community."
Source: farmonline.com.au
Posts
0 comments