Geoff Kirkby, whose farms 30 km east of Bellata near Moree, says growing cotton has been “an awesome experience”.
Geoff first planted around 200 hectares of double-skip dryland cotton
(approximately 100 green hectares) in the 2015-16 season on his
‘Lowana’ property after discussions with his agronomist.
He said the price of cotton at the time was a major factor in deciding to grow the crop.
Geoff was impressed from the start about how open the cotton industry
was with providing him the information he needed to be successful.
“Coming into the industry, it blew me away how much people bent over backwards to help me out as a first-time grower,” he said.
“The cotton industry is right behind you from the start.”
Geoff’s first crop yielded four bales per hectare and he was very
happy with the result given there was no rainfall in the latter part of
the season.
He said that the decision to plant cotton for the second time (in the
2016-17 season) was made easy by the profit margin from the previous
year’s crop.
“There was no way we were looking at anything else,” he said.
Geoff said that apart from the better income, cotton provides easier weed control options than grain sorghum.
Geoff planted cotton once again in the 2017-18 season, increasing his area to around 380 hectares (190 green hectares).
