Australian cotton crop seen rising

With cotton planting well underway, Australia's cotton crop in the 2004/05 growing season would jump around 50 percent from last year's drought-affected output, the Australian Cotton Industry Council forecast.
The main industry body on Thursday said planting was forging ahead in the two main growing states of New South Wales and Queensland for the next crop, which is harvested from February through to May.
The council said it estimated the crop would amount to between 2.3 million 500-pound (227 kg) bales and 2.4 million bales, or 522,100 tonnes to 544,800 tonnes, up from 1.53 million bales, or 347,310 tonnes, in 2003/04, ACIC Chair Christine Campbell said in a statement.
The crop would be produced from a planted area of between 300,000 hectares (741,300 acres) and 320,000 ha (790,700 acres), up from 196,000 ha (484,300 acres) in 2003/04,
"The 2005 outlook is an improvement on last year's drought affected crop and is mostly due to increased irrigation water from rains in the year," Campbell said.
Farmers in Burke in western New South Wales and Dirranbandi, Queensland, were planting reasonable cotton crops for the first time in three seasons, although much of the industry is still drought-affected, she said.
Planting was well underway in all areas with water allocations, except the Darling Downs in southern Queensland, where temperatures were still too cool, she said. "A major difference to the crop this year is there is no upper limit on the amount of genetically modified (GMO) cotton that can be grown, subject to resistance management guidelines, due to the Bollgard II variety totally replacing Ingrid," Campbell said.
"Bollgard II has been under development and trial for the past three years and has proved to be a very stable and robust seed variety with two modified genes, targeting cotton's biggest pest threat, the halitosis caterpillar," she said.
US farm chemical giant Monsanto Co developed both GMO products, which trigger the cotton plant into producing its own pesticide to attack the boll weevil.