Australia: cotton-waste soil trial enters phase two
Farmers in New South Wales and Queensland are preparing to launch phase-two trials of a project that encourages the use of shredded cotton textile waste as a soil-enhancement aid.
Queensland farmer Sam Coulton hosted a phase-one trial of the idea. Now a fellow cotton-producer in New South Wales, Scott Morgan, is following suit.
He said he had decided to take part in the textile waste trial because he viewed it as a way of “helping to close the circularity gap”. He said he hoped that the textile material would help improve soil health and encourage the growth of organisms in the soil and that this would, in turn, help him achieve improved yields in future cotton crops.
In late December, Mr Morgan distributed 2.4 tonnes of shredded textile waste onto an already planted cotton field. He worked with a charitable organisation called Thread Together to carry this out. The project partners then used overhead irrigation to water the material into the soil.
By mid-March, according to Mr Morgan, the resulting crop was “looking good”, with the plants standing a height of around 50 centimetres. They are scheduled for harvest in late May.
Phase one of these trials took place in 2021 at Sam Coulton’s farm. He has said the experience was positive, although poor weather and covid-19 limited the outcomes of the tests. He applied 600 kilos of cotton waste to one plot at his farm in Goondiwindi. He has since furrow cultivated and irrigated the plot and found the material to have broken down significantly.
Soil scientist Dr Oliver Knox oversaw phase one and is overseeing phase two of the trial. He found that organic cotton in the top 10 centimetres of soil on the phase-one plot had increased from 0.77% to 1.08%. “That is a significant jump,” Dr Knox said. “Sulphur has also increased from 4.5 mg per kilo to 7.4 mg per kilo and that indicates improved soil fertility and health.”
