Agricultural
22 May, 2025
Nobby farmer named as Cotton awards finalist
Cotton Australia has named Matt Richards of RDS Farming at Nobby as one of five finalists for the 2025 Bayer Cotton Grower of the Year award.
Matt Richards, his wife Emma and Father Alan have been farmers at Nobby for many years, farming 600 hectares off Fett Road.
The other finalists are:
Tyson Armitage - Wamara Farming Trust, Cecil Plains QLD
Brownhill Family - Merrilong Agricultural Company, Spring Ridge NSW
Tom and Julia Eather – Bellevue Pastoral Company, Narrabri, NSW
Thomas Popp - ‘Springfield’, RMI Ltd, Kurumbal Qld
The winner of the Cotton Grower of the Year and the AgriRisk High Achiever of the year award are to be announced at the Cotton Collective in Toowoomba in August.
Cotton Australia’s CEO Adam Kay said the nominees for this year’s top cotton industry awards are all highly deserving, with some encountering a challenging year particularly with the onset of rain at the start of picking.
“The awards are the Australian cotton industry’s top grower honours for the year, and they recognise a range of attributes including innovation, sustainability, water efficiencies, nutrition and soil health, and commitment to their own communities.
“This year the nominees represent a range of cotton growers with one producing only his third cotton crop while another family has been growing cotton for more than 30 years and are now fifth generation farmers.
“I am also pleased to say that all the nominees this year are family farms ranging in size from two full time employees to more than 60 across several farms, displaying the great diversity that Australian cotton farms are renowned for.”
The growers were nominated after winning regional awards or after recognition from other growers, impressed by their farming strategies and crop outcomes.
The farms in this year’s nominations include some with predominantly rain fed crops while others are fully irrigated, using a variety of irrigation methods.
As part of the judging effort, Cotton Australia supported last year’s Bayer Grower of the Year Scott Balsillie and AgriRisk High Achiever Steve McVeigh in visiting each of the nominee’s farms, accompanied by sponsor representatives, to witness first-hand their innovative and forward-thinking farming practices.
“Being named as the recipient of the Bayer Grower of the Year award for 2024 was the highlight of my agricultural career, and being able to visit the finalists on their farms in 2025 has been another highlight,” Mr Balsillie said.
“They are all very dedicated and talented and each one deserves recognition for what they are achieving.”
The Bayer Cotton Grower of the Year and several other awards will be announced at the Cotton Collective at the Awards Dinner in Toowoomba on 6 August this year.
Cotton Australia provided a thorough assessment of the Richards family operation.
Matt’s father Alan was very innovative, and he developed machinery and implements to help grow a thriving business, centred mainly on onions with contracts in place and a tried and tested process for delivering their produce to market.
While the family grew onions, sorghum, wheat and barley, three years ago they decided to try cotton, even though their area isn’t known for growing the fibre.
Matt said the newer varieties make it possible and while some were impacted by water availability issues, they managed to be very effective with water from day one.
Sparked by a desire to mitigate weed issues and to broaden their interests from vegetables to a high-value crop, Matt asked around, gained some advice, and planted the first cotton crop.
The first year taught them many lessons with a crop that was grown too long and was hit by frost three days after being planted.
“It’s a short window in this region and we didn’t get it right the first time,” he said.
“But we tweaked what we were doing, and played with the row configuration and we achieved the award this year for High Achiever for the Darling Downs.”
When other growers ask about their water use efficiency results, RDS Farming is pleased to report an average of 3.3 megs per hectare generating an average of 12.6 bales per hectare, in the third year of producing cotton.
That is the second highest yield of the five finalists.
In total they have 70 ha of irrigated cotton.
The regions soil types can also be a challenge.
On their farm, Matt experiences everything from light red soil to creek black, all requiring different treatment to get the right conditions for cotton.
Another new tool in their toolkit is drones and after learning how to fly, Matt now regularly uses the technique for spraying applications and to get ahead of forecast rain events or defoliation.
Matt is heavily focussed on their integrated pest management strategies, monitoring beneficial insects and the effect they are having on the non-beneficials.
The objective is to spray only if needed and if that application was required, to spray at the first flower to avoid impacting bees foraging in the area.
The family is readily aware that achieving quality results has been a work in progress with trial and error leading the way in improvements.
With only three years of cotton growing behind them, they are happy with the results so far and continue to strive for even better outcomes while aiming for the highest of efficiencies, crop quality and yield.
As a vegetable grower with significant experience, the Richards family understands the importance of soil health and remains committed to better understanding drainage of paddocks and crop rotations to increase water infiltration and retention to maximise water impacts.
So far on their cotton journey they have found that cotton following soybeans has worked well in retaining moisture and sustaining soil health, however more detailed measurement of results after other crops will confirm their early prognosis.
As a progressive company the family is always on the lookout for technology to help make their farm more efficient.
Apart from the drone they utilise a pump control app to monitor megs used, water levels, change variable speed drive via their phone and GPS tracking of irrigation.
Their vision is to maximise resources, produce high quality food and fibre and be the most efficient in water and inputs while leaving the land in better order for their fourth generation to prosper and enjoy into the future.
