Charlie Friend, his wife Carly and parents Wal and Jane Friend, farm about 10,900ha east of Walgett. Photos: Supplied

Just when Walgett mixed farmer Charlie Friend thought things couldn't get any worse, a wet finish affected desiccation and picking of this year's cotton crop.

Wet conditions delayed preparation for the 360ha crop, and poor bed formation affected emergence, before multiple spray drift incidents over summer caused damage to much of it.

"We got a fair bit of hormone damage across the entire crop, and then a very wet finish, which didn't help picking," he said.

"So, a few things didn't go our way."

Mr Friend, his wife Carly and parents Wal and Jane Friend, farm about 10,900ha east of Walgett, in the Orana region of northern NSW.

They crop about 5500ha, producing dryland winter crops of wheat, chickpeas and faba beans, and irrigated cotton in summer.

Under the name Kercargo Pastoral Company, the Friends also have a herd of about 400 Shorthorn and Angus-cross cows producing yearlings for feedlots, and a mob of young trade cattle they bought at 280-300kg, aiming to grow out to 450-550kg. Stock graze on about 5300ha of Mitchell grass and winter herbages with weaners being turned off onto fodder crops of Moby barley and oats.

Soils are mostly heavy, grey vertosols. Average annual rainfall in the area is about 435mm, although the past six years have been a topsy-turvy period for the family.

Mr Friend returned to the family farm in late 2019 after two years of significantly below average rainfall: 195mm in 2018 and 123mm in 2019.

After the drought broke in February 2020, they had three good years and "this year was shaping up pretty good as well".

Mr Friend said wet conditions last year delayed preparation for the cotton until August when several areas were lasered, followed by spreading urea at about 440kg/ha and pulling up hills.

"Because it was a bit wet, we couldn't pull from a great depth, otherwise we'd get big clumps of dirt, so our hills were a bit shallow, and we didn't have the greatest consistency to get good seed-soil contact," he said.

Carly Friend and daughter Billie in a cotton crop at the family farm east of Walgett.

After trialling the new XtendFlex variety, Sicot 743B3XF, last year Mr Friend opted to plant 145ha of it and 215ha of Sicot 748B3F.

Using an 8m Kinze planter, he planted the cotton seed targeting 10 plants per square metre on 1m row spacings from mid-October.

About 60mm of rain in early November caused some waterlogging and one field had to be replanted.

With hindsight, Mr Friend said they probably should have waited a week for the change to pass through before watering up, but were in the thick of harvesting winter grain and pulse crops and jumped the wrong way.

The cotton was irrigated using a siphon and flood furrow irrigation system that draws water from the 1800 megalitre on-farm storage dam, which is filled from the Namoi River and regulated out of Lake Keepit and Split Rock Dam.

The Friends started the year on 100 per cent water allocation and budgeted for 7-8 megalitres per hectare on the cotton.

Three fields received 10 waterings, while the fourth - which had been replanted - was irrigated 11 times.

Pest and disease pressure was low, with two mirid sprays applied in January and March.

Being able to use glufosinate in the XtendFlex variety has been helpful for managing feathertop Rhodes grass and windmill grass, as well as fleabane which can otherwise be "near impossible to kill".

About 7-8 megalitres per hectare is budgeted for watering the cotton using a siphon and flood furrow irrigation system.

Mr Friend also sprayed three in-crop applications of glyphosate to combat sesbania, peach vine, Chinese lantern, milk thistle, yellow vine and annual fleabane.

Picking started with the three more advanced fields in mid-May before the contractor went back to their own crop.

"We probably got into it a bit earlier that we would have liked; it was tagging quite a bit," Mr Friend said.

"Then, when we got around to picking that fourth field, it actually picked quite a bit better than the first two because everything had dried out a bit more."

The cotton has yet to be ginned at Queensland Cotton, near Wee Waa, but based on module numbers, Mr Friend said he was expecting yields of about 10 bales per hectare.

This would be 3-4 bales/ha below average and a disappointing result.

"We plan for an average year and it's still worth going on with, but it's annoying," he said.

"You cop the things that you do wrong yourself, but when there's outside factors influencing your production, it gets a bit frustrating."

Spray drift threat

Mr Friend said they first noticed signs of hormone damage around January 1, which they estimated had occurred in the week before Christmas when there was a lot of post-harvest spraying by the region's grain growers. This was followed by several more events in January.

"Each hit knocks off a week or two weeks' worth of growth," he said.

"So, you've got to play catch up, and then ultimately, we just run out of growing season at the back end of the year."

Mr Friend now considers spray drift their major risk when growing cotton, despite increasing awareness of the issue among grain growers.

"Like we saw over the summer, it's still happening," he said.

"The immediate neighbours are probably doing the right thing, but potentially, people who think that they're far enough away might be ... more of the problem than the people right next door, if you know what I mean."

Hormone damage from spray drift apparent in the cotton in early January.

Spray drift costs the cotton industry about $6m each year and prompted the development of a network of 102 automatic weather stations across NSW and Queensland.

The stations provide real time weather data about the presence and absence of hazardous temperature inversions. It is illegal to spray agricultural chemicals during hazardous surface temperature inversions - which can allow droplets, particles or vapour to be carried up to 30km from the target area.

Despite the setbacks, Mr Friend is optimistic next season will be better.

"We haven't got there yet, but we're going to put more effort into getting everything set up a bit better this year," he said.

"But we should have plenty of water and yeah, it's looking pretty good."

This article appeared in Australian Cotton & Grains Outlook