Every decision at Myobie hinges on stored soil moisture and in-crop rain because of Warakirri Cropping's dryland-only policy.

Farm manager Rowan Bennett said that also applied to production of its core crop, cotton.

"The rest of the rotation is in place to basically establish stubble cover to fallow for cotton," he said.

"The budgeted rotation every year is about a third of the farm to cotton, a third of the farm to sorghum, and the other third to winter cereal, either wheat or barley.

"The more cotton the better, because that drives our returns, but there's trigger points with cotton."

The proviso is that soils must contain at least 80 per cent moisture before they can be planted to cotton.

If not, Mr Bennett said they had to consider alternatives, such as sorghum or long fallow back to a winter crop, with decisions guided by the prices of fuel, fertiliser and commodities.

The Myobie aggregation totals almost 6970 hectares across two properties, Myola and Wyobie, on the western Darling Downs.

Myola is at Kupunn, southwest of Dalby, and Wyobie is on the Jimbour Plains, north of Dalby. Both have average annual rainfall of about 595mm.

The farms are run as one enterprise with a single workforce, machinery pool and a three-year rotation, which is typically cotton followed by short fallow, sorghum, winter cereal, long fallow and back to cotton.

Mr Bennett said the 2024-25 season was "a really good year for us".

Even with a relatively dry winter, the soil held enough moisture to produce 4.5 tonnes per hectare of wheat.

Good rain at the right time over summer helped the 3200ha of cotton average 6 bales per hectare, compared to the 5.5 they had budgeted for.

"And most of the sorghum was between five and six tonnes per hectare as well," he said. "It was just a really good summer."

Despite some challenges, Mr Bennett said 2025-26 was shaping up as another solid season.

By late March, the crop at Myola was ready for defoliation, while cotton at Wyobie was still filling bolls.

He attributed the difference to a combination of soil type and missed rainfall.

Mr Bennett said the soils at Wyobie had "a bigger bucket", which held more plant available water thanks to the deeper profile, and the crop was boosted by 120mm of rain in March.

On the other hand, Myola wetted up better and was able to produce crops more often from less moisture, but missed out on rain in January-February.

Mr Bennett was still hoping Myola would yield more than 5 bales per hectare and said it was "looking very promising" for 6 bales or more at Wyobie.

Preparation for this season's 3400ha crop began in February with deep N soil testing.

That data was combined with yield, protein data and EM surveys, to establish production zones and determine what fertiliser rates were needed to achieve yield targets.

Variable rate application of urea, averaging 170kg/ha, was spread or single disced - depending on rain forecasts at the time - to reduce the risk of nitrogen loss from volatilisation.

Residual herbicides were applied in July, followed by a pre-planting knockdown spray in October-November.

In some fields a Boss strip tiller machine was used to ruffle a 30cm wide band of soil and produce a more even seed bed to improve plant establishment, while leaving most stubble intact on the flat.

The cotton is grown on one metre double-skip configuration without hilling.

The first round of planting into marginal moisture occurred in early November, with the rest in the first week of December.

Seed was planted at rates of 12 seeds per metre using a Boss DX 50 double disc planter.

Varieties included Sicot 748B3F and the XtendFlex varieties Sicot 253B3XF and Sicot 619B3XF.

Mr Bennett said the ability to use herbicides such as dicamba and glufosinate in the XtendFlex varieties was a valuable tool for staying on top of the main problem weeds, which include feathertop Rhodes grass, blue grass and fleabane.

Disease pressure was low and the crop received the usual two sprays for sucking insects, as well as routine applications of mepiquat for canopy management.

Mr Bennett said weather during the crucial flowering and boll setting periods had been close to ideal.

"It hasn't been too hot," he said. "It hasn't been too cold, there hasn't been too many overcast days. It's been reasonably good weather, really. I can't complain."

After picking finishes in May, modules will be sent for processing at the Louis Dreyfus Company and Queensland Cotton gins at Dalby.

Future plans for Myobie include continuing an extensive soil amelioration program of spreading 5t/ha of screened cattle manure over a quarter of the farm each year.

Mr Bennett said deep ripping and phosphorus placement at depths of about 25cm would also occur across about 20pc of the farm each year.

"Our soils are very low in phosphorus at depth - they've been heavily mined over years and years of farming, and we're noticing pretty significant responses to phosphorus," he said.

Now in his fourth year at Myobie, Mr Bennett said he had had a lot to learn.

"I come from an irrigated cotton background," he said.

"This is my first dryland scenario and I've spoken to a lot of growers and contractors and consultants in the area.

"That's the good thing about the cotton industry. I've always found it very transparent and lots of collaboration. There's a lot of information readily available to use, and I always look over the fence, because there's a lot of innovative and good thinkers out there.

"I've had a lot of conversations and learned a hell of a lot from all the guys up here, because there's a lot of good growers around, that's for sure."

Established on behalf of Australian superannuation fund Rest Super, Warakirri Cropping owns and operates more than 155,000 hectares of broadacre cropping farms across 11 aggregations in four states.

This article appeared in Australian Cotton & Grains Outlook