North West cotton harvest slightly delayed but crops still tracking well

Two farmers in Breeza and Boggabri are keeping their fingers crossed the frost disappears until after harvest in a matter of weeks.

Breeza farmer John Hamparsum said damage to his crop hadn't been too bad as yet, but hoped the cold "doesn't get worse".

He expects his crop will be ready for harvest in about two weeks.

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"The actual cotton boll freezes and normally the way it opens is the cells shrink and that pulls the boll open, but when it gets frozen the plant cell basically explodes from expanding too fast from frost," he explained.

"Once it's broken, it doesn't open up so you can't get the cotton out. The frost has also frozen a lot of the leaves.

"It's a bit of a disappointment after going through the drought and seeing what looks like a reasonable crop, then the frost arrives."

Luckily, the mice plague hasn't hit the Breeza plains too badly yet.

"Because we've harvested sorghum, the mice are moving out of the sorghum and getting into the cotton so we're monitoring the damage at this stage," Mr Hamparsum said.

Boggabri farmer Andrew Watson baited the mice on his property prior to defoliation.

"We've only got a little bit of cotton in this year and ours is not too bad, because ours has defoliated we'll be picking next week but I have heard there's been some significant damage," Mr Watson said.

His 120 hectares of cotton is the smallest he's had in at least 30 years, because of the drought.

"Coming off the drought when we've had very little water resources when we planted," he said.

"Next year looks quite good ... and a lot haven't used our bore water allocations so we can use what we didn't this year, next year.

"It's a complete change of season which does a lot for your mental health."

He has good expectations for the quality of this year's cotton crop.

"I'm hoping we'll see some good quality, long, stable, good micronaire and if we don't get too much more rain, hopefully good colour," Mr Watson said.

"The cotton goes slightly grey and loses its really bright whiteness so that's a bit of a discount we receive when we sell it.

"We would like it not to rain until we finish harvest, but we're planting other crops so we want it to rain on that."

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