New South Wales and Queensland cotton farmers are set to earn big with the expected increase in cotton harvests this winter.

According to Cotton Australia chief executive Adam Kay, “It looks like 320,000 hectares of irrigated cotton will go in, evenly split between NSW and Queens-land, while the big shift is in the number of dryland hectares being sown.”

Kay estimates “about 110,000ha of rain-grown cotton will be planted,” thereby, “making this easily the biggest cotton harvest” since emerging from the drought. In September of 2009, the cotton crop was forecast to be about 160,000 hectares.

Cotton growers are highly ecstatic of the expected yield for the winter crop due to high prices. New York cotton futures for the December contract have gone up above $US 100 cents a pound this week. The $US 40 cent rise is better than the prices in 2009.

The “A” index in August 2009 was $US 64.26 cents a pound. For August this year, the index was $US 90.35. Last year's September index was $64.07 cents.

Representatives from Australia's cotton growers will be bringing home technical knowledge on the industry after participating in the 69th plenary meeting of the International Cotton Advisory Committee in Texas.