Cotton Flood Fund will support crop replanting activity

Cotton Australia has launched the Cotton Flood Fund, which is designed to ensure cotton growers and the cotton communities they support, will be able to fund replanting their cotton crop for next season.

Cotton Australia CEO Adam Kay says while there are good returns from growing cotton, especially with international demand at an all time high, the crop can be expensive to plant, a cost many flood affected cotton growers could struggle with later this year.

 “As the cotton industry contemplates harvest time soon, our thoughts are also with those growers whose crops went under water and never recovered, in the Macquarie Valley in NSW and further north to Texas, on the Darling Downs, Theodore and Emerald in Queensland.”

 “The Cotton Flood Fund is about making sure there will be money available to help those growers replant, providing local jobs and injecting a much needed boost directly into small cotton country communities.”

Mr Kay says cotton growers are being asked to donate cotton bales into the fund and large corporations who do business with the cotton industry will also be able to contribute to the Cotton Flood Fund.

 “Mate helping mate is a tradition as old as the bush itself, the Cotton Flood Fund will mean all those cotton growers who have suggested this idea, can now deliver their contribution where it will do the most good.”

The Cotton Australia CEO says a board of independent trustees will be formed to determine the eligibility criteria and will decide the fairest way to allocate funds from the Cotton Flood Fund.