Page 24 - Kickin Up Dust - Australia

FEATURE Cotton Country Australia

“I’m a cotton farmer.” Just saying this phrase can land you in hot water depending on where you are
and someone’s perception of the industry. Growing cotton has evolved in our country to be more water-
efficient, use less insecticide and be more sustainable. Farmers will always use their water to grow a crop
that gives them the best return, whether it be rice, tomatoes, lettuce or cotton.
“
But cotton is more than this to the communities where it is grown.
Cotton is a community crop. It takes a whole community of experts to
grow a crop season after season. “

My husband, Andrew, and I have been growing cotton
on our family-owned and operated farm near Hay
in the Riverina since 2014. Over that time, we have
documented our experiences through photos and clips
and uploaded a number of videos to our YouTube
Account, Bigskies31. Growing a crop has so much
visual glamour with all the different actions throughout
the year – crop emergence, thunderstorms rolling in
when you’re checking the water, crop dusters doing
their thing, skies filled with orange and pink as the
picker drops big yellow ‘eggs’. It’s seriously pretty!

I like to draw realism and one afternoon I reproduced
one of my close-up photos of open cotton bolls. Andrew
loved it so much that he thought it would make a
great logo. We noticed many logos representing the
cotton industry were images of simplistic, fluffy-looking
clouds and we didn’t feel they represented us, as
cotton actually has a beautiful golden boll husk and
pretty looking leaf. And so, in 2021 Cotton Country
Australia was born.

What started out as a drawing and became a symbolic
logo on a Country Trucker Cap hat with a website and
an Instagram page, soon found that there was a whole
community across Australia that needed their Cotton
Country story shared. We sold out our first batch of
fifty trucker caps in three days and had to wait three
months for our next batch, which has also sold like
hotcakes! We send them across all the Cotton Valleys
in Australia, including the far-reaching Ord River
Scheme at Kununurra and Far North Queensland, and
even to the USA and Canada.
We have stacked our Cotton Country Australia
Instagram Page with images of the ‘behind the scenes’
of growing a cotton crop from our own experiences
and also share other’s images and clips on our stories.
We profile people involved in the cotton industry
community including grader drivers, bore mechanics,
agronomists, and young women giving agriculture a
crack. What we find so rewarding is when people tell
us they love how we are promoting cotton farming
and sharing the stories of the industry that are often
unseen. It’s so exciting to see the following we are
developing, which in turn helps us to share the good
news stories of the industry. We love it!
KICKIN UP DUST to educate the next generation of Cotton Country KICKIN UP DUST
We also give a percentage of sales to The Smith Family,

community members.

Samantha Davies
24 Socials - @cottoncountryaustralia 21