Lloyd Sharp says the 71BRF variety crop is about to receive its second watering, noting it is “nearly” at boll set.

“It’s been a good season,” he said.

“We had some water in our dams so we pre-irrigated the crop, then we had all that heat."

Anchorfield usually applies a megalitre a hectare, principally from underground mains, plus will augment this courtesy of a small flow from the Condamine River.

With a quarter of the crop at early boll set, Lloyd said the remainder was still flowering, also looking in good shape.

This year the property is growing not only 404ha (1,000 acres) of cotton but also wheat and sorghum.

In recent years both chickpeas and corn have been worked into the rotation.

The point to make about the cotton acreage is that it is geared to what can be handled by the property’s John Deere 9970 picker that is driven by Lloyd once the season gets under way.

Fully aware of the new on-board module-building cotton pickers due to be seen in Queensland paddocks later this year, he says he will be keen to see how they perform.

Conceding that “cotton prices could be better,” Lloyd said the risk of growing crops in the recent run of tough seasons required growers to spread the risk by establishing other crops, notably corn and sorghum.

There’s no doubt, however, the 60mm to 80mm of rain that fell around Christmas has made all the difference to prospects.

“It looks pretty good as far as the cotton is concerned,” Lloyd said.

“It’s been tough over the past few years, what with us being in a drought situation.”

So all eyes are on how 71BRF will perform this year.

“It is a good variety for this area – we have had tremendous yields from it,” Lloyd said.

The property usually averages nine bales a hectare, helped a long by urea being applied at 300kg a hectare during pupae-busting operations carried out in the aftermath of last year’s crop.

Noting there was not as much cotton being grown as usual across the district, principally because of the water situation early in the season, Lloyd said Anchorfield had also planted “quite a bit of sorghum” at the turn of the year.