A $125 million investment into a new cotton initiative by Cotton Research and Development Corporation has been approved by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Murray Watt.
Called ‘Clever Cotton’, the new initiative provides a roadmap for CDRC’s strategic research and development plan for 2023 to 2028. The investment is expected to drive a $1 billion return in value for Australia’s cotton industry.
The plan includes the establishment of a sustainable low-carbon production system and capturing data and insights to improve the market access and value of Australian cotton. CDRC executive director Dr Ian Taylor said it enables the cotton industry to respond faster to the rising challenges affecting where and how much cotton is produced.
“Biosecurity, a changing climate, demographic shifts, digital disruption, evolving consumer expectations, automation, geopolitical unrest, urbanisation, and competing demands for resources; the challenges facing cotton growers are more complex than ever,” Dr Taylor said.
“To overcome these 21st-century challenges, we need 21st-century solutions – and that’s what Clever Cotton will deliver."
Dr Taylor said CDRC has helped growers achieve a 97% reduction in insecticide use, a 52% reduction in water usage, and a 34% reduction in land needed to grow a single bale of cotton.
“Our goal now is to deliver the next major step forward for our industry,” he said.
“To meet the industry-defining challenges that lay ahead of us, we need RD&E that delivers transformational change. Rather than smaller projects that, together and over time, add up to deliver meaningful solutions, we’re going to deliver bigger investments with bigger outcomes and bigger impact.
“Clever Cotton champions that approach.”
Clever Cotton works across three pillars of investment: paddock, people and planet. The pillars, according to CDRC, “mirror the key focus areas in the Australian cotton industry's sustainability framework, which recognises sustainability is integral to growing cotton in a variable climate; to maintaining trust in the industry; and to securing access in export markets that are starting to regulate the environmental and social impacts of textile production all the way back to the farm.”
“Clever Cotton aims to drive the next round of transformative innovations that will secure a sustainable product, with a sustainable future, for generations to come,” Dr Taylor said.