Australian cotton and the digital agriculture revolution

Australia’s cotton industry is technologically advanced and at the cutting edge of science and innovation. The adventurous spirit of our farmers, a culture of sharing and new digital technologies has transformed Australia’s cotton farms. Today’s modern cotton growers are not just farmers but drone pilots, data analysts, map makers and scientists. This collection highlights some of the latest inventions and discoveries being used on Australia's cotton farms to drive productivity and sustainability.

Rather than using guesswork, the old “shovel test” and starting thousands of irrigation siphons by hand, many of Australia’s cotton growers are now using state of the art water measurement technology to determine when to water their crops with fully automated systems. Water data is collected in the field by sensors that relay this information to a decision making tool that calculates whether or not the plant needs water. This then triggers the irrigation system based on the crop’s needs in real time. This type of technology has helped Australia’s cotton industry to improve its water use efficiency by more than 40% in the past 15 years.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones are flown over cotton fields to get a better overall picture of how the cotton crop is growing during the season, and to pinpoint any issues. In future they may be further developed and used to autonomously perform other farm inspection tasks, like searching for pests and diseases and monitoring additional aspects of irrigation. 

To reduce the carbon footprint on a cotton farm, solar panels can be used to power irrigation pumps, rather than using diesel fuel. This saves energy and cost to the farmer, and in the future these hybrid systems may also be linked to a battery back-up to further reduce the use of diesel.

Water is perhaps the most valuable resource on a cotton farm and one of the best ways to improve efficiency is to scientifically understand the crop’s water requirements. To do this, Australia’s cotton farmers monitor soil water within the root zone using technology like the EM38. This helps to monitor crop water use, the amount of water available to the plant as well as tracking water movement and re-distribution throughout a growing season. 

Around 50% of the world’s cotton is picked by hand, mainly in countries with smallholder farmers looking after family plots of land. In Australia, cotton is mostly picked with round module pickers fitted with GPS. Each round module (like the yellow ones in this field) is inserted with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag containing information about where and when the cotton was picked. This allows it to be traced right back to the field and the data can also be overlaid with yield maps to help maximise future efficiencies.

Robots and driverless vehicles are being experimented with by Australian cotton growers. Australian business Swarm Farm has invented a fleet of small, high-tech, autonomous, lightweight weed spraying robots. Developer and farmer Andrew Bate sees a future where these machines will be planting, applying fertiliser precisely and economically, eliminating weeds and insects and harvesting the crop leading to higher yields, lower costs, cleaner and greener food and fibre. 

These just look like any normal cotton seeds, but in fact they have in-built genes that greatly reduce the need for pesticides in Australia’s cotton crops. Australia’s cotton growers have managed to reduce their pesticide use by 92% in the last 15 years, due to a combination of biotechnology and Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

With the rise of internet and satellite communication, the fall in the cost of sensor technology and data storage and increasing computer processing speed, cotton production in Australia is rapidly developing into a data- intensive business. The next big challenge is how to make all of the data collected by growers, consultants and researchers talk to each other in a meaningful way that allows an increase in productivity and efficiency and a smaller environmental footprint.