Australian cotton growers have some new tools to guide their businesses to be as efficient and sustainable as possible.
Being sustainable is not only good for business, it also provides growers and the industry with a valuable story to tell.
The story that everyone past the farm gate - raw lint customers, brands, consumers and other countries - wants to hear today is the impact that growing a cotton crop has on things like greenhouse gas emissions, water resources, soil health, and human rights.
CRDC and Cotton Australia are working together to help growers and the industry share their story by creating guidelines such as the PLANET. PEOPLE. PADDOCK. Sustainability Framework and the Strategic Roadmap for Australian Cotton, while updating programs such as myBMP to encourage growers to build a more efficient and sustainable operation.
What does it really mean?
But what does the term 'sustainability' essentially mean in terms of cotton growing? Spotlight asked Chris Cosgrove, the industry's sustainability consultant.
"Sustainability is about managing the economic, social and environmental risks and opportunities in any business or industry," Chris said. "Like everything else, if you measure it, you're more likely to manage it well, which means you're more likely to be efficient with the economic, human and natural resources you depend on to grow cotton."
Efficiency and productivity - being as effective as possible with the inputs needed to grow cotton - are key benefits of managing sustainably. A recent example of the Australian cotton industry's improved sustainability and economic profile is due to more efficient use of water.
Advances in science and technology and their uptake by growers were key aspects of improved water use efficiency (WUE). Initially, technology was developed to enable precise measurement of water use and the familiar phrase 'Measure to Manage' was coined. When this was combined with improvements delivered by plant breeding, growers started producing more with less. It's a proud achievement and a story that is worth sharing.
Measure to manage
Water is the biggest input expense and constraint for many growers, but the sustainability and efficiency correlation is the same for all other inputs.
For example, improving nitrogen use efficiency improves farm margins, and delivers a lower greenhouse gas intensity crop to customers; reducing pesticide use lowers farm costs and shows responsible stewardship to the community to support ongoing use of pesticides; keeping people safe reduces temporary or permanent loss of staff to the farm business and increases the appeal of the farm as a workplace for potential employees, and so on.
"The idea of measuring inputs is not a new one, and because there is such a strong relationship between sustainability and productivity, most of the sustainability data needed by banks, cotton brands and others for sustainability reporting is data that farmers already have," Chris said.
"Growers who measure key sustainability indicators and monitor farm performance to improve productivity or efficiency can use the same data to support market access, by giving customers the social and environmental information they are increasingly asking for.
"This will improve the industry's social licence by providing real data on responsible social, environmental and economic impacts."
Updated indicators of farm sustainability
The industry's sustainability indicators have recently been updated and compiled into a spreadsheet of 44 indicators that growers or their advisers can download and populate with annual data. There are eight priority areas: water, greenhouse gases, native vegetation, pesticides, soil health, workplace, productivity, and economic contribution. Under each area are a handful of indicators designed to act as guides for what to measure.
Chris said the updated guidelines have taken the guesswork out of what to measure at a farm level to align with the industry's sustainability reporting.
"The new list of farm-scale indicators aims to give growers a tool to measure the relevant things once and make that data work harder, because it is designed to be used at multiple levels, including for farm business decision-making, emissions accounting, natural capital accounting, and to comply with customer requests around topics like regenerative agriculture, human rights and water use," he said.
"Growers tell us they are frustrated by having to deliver the same data multiple times to different entities such as banks, insurers and regulatory bodies.
"The new list is designed to provide the data that farmers are most likely to be asked for, so it's a great place to start if you want to pull into one place the information for multiple requests.
"It's critical that we have every farmer or their adviser using the same language and measuring the same things. You can choose to measure all the indicators in this list, or just a few of them - that's your decision, but if everyone starts with this list, then we can start to eliminate the confusion and inconsistency surrounding sustainability."
For those wanting to take an additional step and create a farm sustainability report, there is a simple template available for download. The revamped Australian cotton sustainability indicators, with industry-scale and farm-scale indicators and a farm-scale reporting template, are available for download at the new sustainability website.
