Moree irrigator Mick Humphries has one message for politicians when it comes time to consider a proposed bill to ban the export of Australian cotton: “decisions need to be based on fact and not on opinion”.
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The third generation farmer has 700 hectares of irrigated country on his ‘Chesney’ property at Mallawa, about 70km south-west of Moree.
In a normal year, he’d have between 300 and 600ha of irrigated crops, mostly cotton.
This season, when the district has had roughly a third of its average rainfall, the Humphries have just 44ha of cotton – half a paddock – which was planted on the last of their irrigated water.
“We did have a little bit of water left in our dams at the start of the season, so decided to plant one field using the water we had and relying on rainfall to keep it going,” Mr Humphries said.
“We’ve had 30 millimetres rain in crop in 5 to 10mm lots, so not useful rain.”
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All three of the dams at ‘Chesney’ are dry, the first time the farm has been completely dry since 2009.
Mr Humphries has no water allocations for ‘Chesney’ this year, and while his other property ‘Caroale’ near Ashley does have bore and carry-over allocation and 300ha of irrigated crops, all up it’s a quarter of what he’d normally grow.
“This is the smallest crop we’ve had since the mid-2000s. I wasn’t running the business back then, so it’s the smallest crop I’ve ever had,” Mr Humphries said.
With rainfall forecasts not looking promising at this stage, the Humphries will be relying on these crops to keep them going for the next financial year.
“At this stage, next year we’ll have absolutely nothing at all,” Mr Humphries said.
“It’s not looking good, but that’s agriculture.
“It’s a really critical time. If we don’t get any rain to plant a winter crop, we’ll have to make some pretty tough choices about staff. We’re already making tough choices and that goes back to town. We’re fortunate to have a crop this year but we’re not in a position to spend what we’d normally spend in town.
“I’d normally have three people out here full-time. There’s no-one full-time at the moment.”
The Humphries are not alone. There are similar stories throughout the Gwydir Valley and Border Rivers region, so when South Australian Senator Rex Patrick announced this week that his Centre Alliance party will introduce legislation in the next session of parliament to halt the export of Australian cotton, irrigators like Mr Humphries are, understandably, frustrated.
“Realistically, it’s not a very well thought-out policy to begin with,” Mr Humphries said.
“You wouldn’t change the amount of water we use on a property.
“It’ll just mean instead of growing a crop that is the most valuable to us, we’d grow the next valuable crop, which would mean less money in the economy, less money in town and exactly the same amount of water will be used.”
If the ban were to be implemented, Mr Humphries said irrigators will still have access to the same amount of water, through their water entitlements which they pay for, however their ability to be profitable as a business will be significantly reduced.
“The next profitable crop is half the value of cotton,” he said.
“It depends on the season as to what that is, but nothing compares to cotton. It fits our farming system so much better.”
One of the arguments in the current debate is that cotton is not a suitable crop to grow in Australia.
However Mr Humphries’ current cotton crop is still in with a chance because, unlike other summer crops, cotton is basically a desert crop and needs sunlight and heat to produce fibre, not just moisture.
“It’s ideal [for areas like Moree],” Mr Humphries said.
“Sorghum would have been dead by now, mungbeans the same. [Cotton] can survive hot weather and on minimum moisture.”
With a minimal cotton manufatoring industry in Australia, Mr Humphries said it wouldn’t be viable for growers to continue to grow cotton if an export ban was legislated.
“That’s the hard thing to understand about this bill; there’s still dryland cotton and cotton grown outside the Murray Darling Basin. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense for a politician to be threatening economic industries on this scale. The risk to our export market is just crazy.”
Senator Patrick has claimed the reasoning behind the bill is to reduce the amount of water irrigators use, however Mr Humphries said this is an uneducated statement and one that is not true, as water is allocated to irrigators’ licences.
“The amount of water we use for our crops doesn’t change,” he said.
“We don’t expect to get water every year. We certainly don’t expect to get water when other communities haven’t got drinking water. That’s total rubbish.
“It’s disapppinting that our elected politicians can bring legislation that doesn’t make any sense on any grounds to parliament. His whole angle for this bill is to get the South Australian Royal Commission findings implemented. It’s just crazy. This is the exact opposite of the recommendations which said that no crop should be discriminated against.
“We’ve just got to sit back and hope common sense prevails.”
Mr Humphries said it was also disappointing that Senators Patrick and Sarah Hanson-Young didn’t visit irrigators in the Gwydir Valley during their recent tours of Murray-Darling Basin communities.
“There were many irrigators who invited Senator Hanson-Young and Senator Patrick to visit their farms,” he said.
“They reached out to them and didn’t get any sort of reply. Rather than talk to people who might have slightly alternate views on the subject, they visited people who shared their own ideas.”
When the bill is introduced to parliament, Mr Humphries hopes our politicians make their decisions based on fact, not opinion.
