Greg Bender irrigates a winter crop of Yeti barley at Burradoo Plains, south of Chinchilla. Photos: Supplied

When you've got access to reliable irrigation water all year round but you don't know how long it will last, you have to make the most of it.

That’s what drives the intensive rotation of Hopeland Plains cotton growers Greg and Maryann Bender, who farm 1200 hectares of cropping land south of Chinchilla in Queensland’s Western Downs region.

The Benders produce winter crops of wheat, barley, chickpeas, faba beans and canola, and summer crops of corn, cotton, sorghum, mung beans and millet.

They began growing dryland cotton at Burradoo Plains in the 1990s, before buying a second property closer to the Condamine River with access to irrigation.

The couple expanded the area under irrigation in 2013 after affordable treated water became available from coal seam gas (CSG) extraction by the Shell-owned Queensland Gas Company.

Access to this water – which is not assured and will diminish over the years as CSG production scales down – currently allows them to grow two crops on the whole farm “all year, every year”.

For the past two years, Mr Bender said they had grown cotton, harvesting it in May, before planting wheat, chickpeas or barley in June.

The winter crops were harvested in December and cotton planted straight back into the chickpea paddocks.

Mung beans were planted in the cereal paddocks in January, harvested in April, and followed with chickpeas then cotton.

“You’ve got no residual after the chickpeas, so you literally harvest the chickpeas one day and plant cotton the next, and away you go again,” he said.

“It’s pretty full on, that’s for sure.”

For a time they also grew faba beans and corn for silage, although fall armyworm has made it uneconomical to continue with corn.

Keeping long-term options open

Mr Bender has never grown two cotton crops in a row.

“If cotton’s your main money spinner, in theory, you should be growing as much cotton on your farm as you could every year if you’ve got plenty of water,” he said.

“But if you do that for five years, and then you get half the farm with disease, you’re screwed. So that’s what I’ve been trying to grow all these different crops for.”

Mr Bender said they had no hard and fast rules for preparing cotton fields because “sometimes the weather beats you”.

“Typically, we’ll furrow a paddock right up for the cotton, and then those beds will grow a mung bean crop and a wheat crop without touching that soil again,” he said.

Half the urea, 250kg/ha, and all other nutrients – potash, zinc and phosphorus – is applied up front and incorporated.

Because of the fickle weather, Mr Bender said he preferred to plant the crop and water it up. The other 250-300kg/ha of urea is applied before first flower and 10t/ha of manure is spread across one third of the farm every year.

Last season’s crops included about 400ha of Sicot 746B3F and Sicot 748B3F, and 60ha of the new XtendFlex variety, Sicot 761B3XF , to help manage volunteer cotton without needing to cultivate and damage beds.

The cotton was sown at a rate of 12-13 seeds per metre on 1m row spacings using an Excel planter with precision upgrades, from mid-October to mid-November.

Mr Bender said there were no signs of fusarium wilt or alternaria leaf spot and insect pressure was low.

While feathertop Rhodes grass seemed to be under control, barnyard grass was an emerging problem which he was trying to address with residual pre- and post-emergent herbicides.

This included using Balance and haloxyfop in legume crops.

Dual Gold and Terbyne Xtreme were applied upfront on the cotton, which also received one in-crop spray of Roundup, haloxyfop and Dual Gold, and a second hit of Roundup late in the season.

With average annual rainfall of 600mm, which has delivered 150-200mm of in-crop rain in the past few years, Mr Bender budgets 5-6 megalitres per hectare across four to five waterings for the cotton.

Some of the cotton is irrigated using a siphon and flood furrow irrigation system, while the rest is watered by a huge lateral irrigator – 1270m wide it trundles 2km down the paddock, and has the capacity to pump 1 megalitre an hour and apply 12mm a day across 240ha.

“In the worst case scenario, in the middle of summer, that’s what you’d have to be putting on a cotton crop every day, Mr Bender said.

“That’s got to go seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and if something breaks down, it’s all going to end badly. That’s why I choose to only grow half of it to cotton.”

Wet weather in May interrupted picking and cut last season’s cotton yield by 15 to 20 per cent to average 9 bales per hectare. Downgrades of $50 a bale resulted in a 25pc drop on expected income.

Modules are sent to Queensland Cotton, Dalby, for processing.

Mr Bender said winter rainfall meant they had not needed to irrigate for the past two months.

“All our winter crops are probably at the upper end of the 10 year average, because rainfall is still better than irrigation,” he said.

“We’ve got plenty of water, and all the paddocks are wet, so it looks like a good start for the summer.”

Condabilla Fish Farm is Queensland’s biggest inland aquaculture operation, producing 3 tonnes of fresh Murray cod each week.

Fitting 'livestock' in with cropping

Diversification is crucial for reducing risk in agriculture, but while many farmers rely on rotations, or run sheep or cattle, Greg and Maryann Bender took the unusual step of adding a fish farm to their portfolio in 2019.

Condabilla Fish Farm is 25km as the crow flies from Burradoo Plains and Queensland’s biggest inland aquaculture operation.

Thought to be the second biggest Murray cod producer in Australia, it ships 3 tonnes of fresh cod each week to regular buyers in Sydney and Melbourne, with the balance sold at the Sydney Fish Market, and turns over five figures each week.

“Every single Thursday you get a cheque and there’s not many businesses that you can operate that have got that reliable a cash flow,” Mr Bender said.

A qualified electrician, Mr Bender also has had a sideline installing solar systems.

This article appeared in Australian Cotton & Grains Outlook