COTTON JOBS ACROSS AUSTRALIA
Cotton is a summer crop. It prefers hot summers with low humidity and a maximum amount of sunshine. In general, cotton grows quicker as the average temperature rises and the longer and hotter the season, the greater the yield. The growing season from planting to picking lasts approximately six months.
August To November - Planting
Cottonseed planted as soon as soil is warm enough for satisfactory seed germination and crop establishment.
Jobs Available:
- Tractor Driving
- Irrigation/Watering
- Pesticide Spraying
November To February - Growing Season
Jobs Available:
- Irrigation/Watering
- Ongoing checks for pests, soil moisture level tests and crop weeding
On irrigated cotton farms the initial irrigation (watering) is usually followed by a further four to five irrigations, at two to three week intervals, from mid-December to late-February
March To June - Defoliation, Picking and Transportation To Gins
Jobs Available:
- Picker Driver
- Tractor Driver - Slasher
- Tractor Driver - Mulcher
- Boll Buggy Driver
- Module Builder
- Truck Driving (HC & MC)
- Agronomist
Crop checked by agronomists to make sure it is ready to pick. Large mechanical cotton pickers are used to pick the crop. Growers usually choose to pick the cotton crop once most bolls have opened and fully matured. It is extremely important that cotton is picked dry or discoloration may occur and reduce quality. Cotton is ginned – a process separating lint (raw cotton fibre), cottonseed and trash. Lint is tightly pressed into bales, each weighing 227kg
May To August (Off-Season) - Classing And Marketing Activities
Jobs Available:
- Tractor Driving – Ploughing
- Tractor Driving – Cultivating
- Laser Levelling
- Farm Maintenance – Machinery / Equipment
- Renovation of Farm Roads and Head Ditches
- Growers plant winter crops and/or graze sheep and cattle
- Growers make improvements on-farm for next season
COTTON FARM MACHINERY
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The cotton picker picks the cotton from the stalk and puts it in a big hopper up on top until it gets full. When the hopper is full, the cotton is then dumped into the boll buggy. (The boll buggy is taken into the field to the picker to get the cotton aka time management). The boll buggy brings the cotton to the module builder and dumps it in, not all at once but in batches kind of like adding flour into the cake batter but for a different reason. However that’s a different blog for another day. The cake batter one, I mean. We’ll continue here with the cotton being dumped in batches into the module builder. That is so the cotton can be packed down into a huge tight rectangle of cotton.
When a module is finished, the machine is then taken off the cotton module and moved to another spot to start another module. That module is covered up with a big top and pulled snug to protect it until it can be picked up by a big truck and taken to the gin for ginning. Modules are good. Lots of modules are even better. It means more cotton which means, more money.
There are mowers and slashers involved too. It mows the bare cotton down as soon as possible, sometimes following right behind the picker. Cotton is a plant that will sucker back out on you in a hurry. I thought that was good- kinda like free cotton, you know – a volunteer crop! But no, it actually robs nutrients from the soil and that’s bad. So you mow it down- as soon as possible. And then on another day, also as soon as possible, you pull the stalks completely out of the ground for the same reason…it will sucker back out and start to grow again.
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