Dillon from Broadacre Contracting yarns with Jimmy from Pitson Contracting about building a family-run...
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Legends, hope your day is going alright.
But if you need my help, there is a possibility it probably is not.
Anyway, as the boys on the Catch My Drift podcast say, a problem shared is a problem halved.
Need a cotton picking contractor?
If you need a cotton picking contractor in Goondiwindi, St George, Dirranbandi, Mungindi, Thallon, Moree, Narrabri or anywhere across the southern Queensland and northern NSW cotton belt, give Dillon at Broadacre Contracting a call on 0439 300 380.
We will solve your problem straight away.
Actually, we should say if you need a cotton picker anywhere in Australia, we can help you.
We are all hearing about the irrigation developments in the Kununurra Ord region, the Douglas Daly region and the Katherine region.
Mate, it is a different world up there.
We generally say we are available from 6am to 9pm, but honestly, if it is urgent, it is urgent.
Broadacre Contracting connects growers directly with verified, accountable cotton picking contractors.
We are not middlemen taking a cut. We remove the guesswork about who is reliable and who is not.
We vet the operators, we know the gear, and we know the regions.
If you need pickers in the paddock, we are your first call, and I would like to think the last call you have to make.
If you have time and you are not checking the weather forecast every 20 minutes because you know there is a front building up, make an account on the Broadacre Contracting website and post a tender yourself by going to My Account > New Tender Post > Post the job.
An instant alert will be sent out to verified cotton contractors covering the Goondiwindi, St George, Dirranbandi, Moree, Narrabri and Wee Waa regions.
Make sure you come back to enjoy this yarn about something a lot of you love. Cotton, keeping the world warm one syphon at a time.
For this episode of Talking Gear Tuesday, Dillon from Broadacre Contracting and the Broadacre film crew are up in Goondiwindi, or as the locals call it, Gundy, having a yarn with Henry from Perry Farming.
Cotton is either picked or stripped, and in this episode we are talking pickers.
Two John Deere CP770 round module cotton pickers, wrapping 2.5 to 3 tonne bales, and why two machines is the magic number for the Perry Farming crew.
If you are not familiar with Goondiwindi, which I am going to say nearly everyone reading will be, even our readers from the west, it sits right on the QLD/NSW border along the Macintyre River.
As you go over the Macintyre on the Newell Highway, you will hit what I class as Australia’s most friendly roundabout for the highway runners.
That roundabout has stuck in my head from the first time I came onto it.
You could swing almost any size load around it without a worry.
It is just big.
It is actually that big it had a dam in the middle of it.
I am not sure if it still does, but it did.
Goondiwindi, the pioneer of roundabouts. Australia needs more of these roundabouts.
Anyway, moving on.
We are in the heart of Australia’s cotton country.
The Border Rivers region stretching from Goondiwindi through to St George, Dirranbandi and Mungindi is one of the most productive cotton belts in the country.
You have Thallon and Talwood to the northwest, Toobeah and Bungunya nearby, Texas and Inglewood to the east, Yelarbon between Gundy and Toowoomba, then cross the border south and you are into Boomi, North Star, Garah, Moree, Narrabri, Wee Waa, Boggabri, Pallamallawa, Biniguy, Ashley, Bellata, Collarenebri and Burren Junction.
There is more to name, but that was a proper tongue twister in itself.
Fair to say, cotton everywhere. Growers everywhere. Pickers everywhere, strippers everywhere, and some very smart people.
There has been some serious innovation coming out of Moree alone, and if you are passionate about cotton, this is the place to be.
If you are a grower reading this, I hope you enjoy it mate, and if you need reliable cotton picking contractors, reach out.
That is where Broadacre Contracting comes in.
Whether you are based at Meandarra needing two pickers for 1,000 hectares of irrigated cotton, out past Cecil Plains on the Darling Downs looking for a contractor to handle your dryland crop, or a cotton operation between Condamine and Dalby wanting someone you can trust, give Dillon a call on 0439 300 380 and we will help you find what you need.
We want to fix your problems.
Give us the opportunity to shake your hand and prove ourselves.
Henry’s great-grandfather started growing cotton at Brookstead on the Darling Downs.
That is where the Perry family is originally from.
As far as Henry’s old man can tell him, the family has been around Goondiwindi since 1991.
That was their first year cotton picking out here in the Border Rivers region.
Then about 8 to 10 years ago, they heavily based the entire business around cotton at Gundy.
That is when the newer gear came in, the operation scaled, and Perry Farming became what it is today.
Irrigated cotton is the core, but they also run headers, spreaders and sprayers across the broadacre side of things.
They also handle dryland cotton picking.
If you want to see what other contractors are running across different disciplines, have a look at our yarn with BB Harvesting on the Darling Downs or Customized Spreading out at Wycheproof.
I want to dive into Brookstead.
Brookstead is in the Toowoomba region, in the productive state of Queensland.
From the 2021 census, the locality of Brookstead had a population of 182 people.
The name Brookstead is derived from brook, indicating creek or watercourse, and stede or stadt, indicating place.
Together, it means a creek-side or camping place.
Welcome to Brookstead.
The Brookstead region of the Darling Downs features highly fertile black vertosol soils, making it one of the most productive multi-crop agricultural zones in Australia.
We spent time with BB Harvesting on the Darling Downs, and it is a region we know well through our filming.
Growers run highly intensive systems, typically rotating between summer crops like cotton and sorghum, and winter crops like wheat, chickpeas and barley.
Now, I am not an agronomist, and I am only speaking from what I have heard, what I have seen and what I feel makes sense.
This is my non-factual opinion, but my thought process.
Multi-crop regions seem to end up with serious issues over time with nutrient value, and I think we are seeing that in the Darling Downs as a zone in relation to pulling a lot of phosphorus out and not replacing it.
I really want some facts on this. I would love a local grower or agronomist to fact-check me and explain if this is true.
Okay, that is Brookstead dialled in.
I got curious about what land goes for out there because I think it paints a picture.
You are looking at a massive range, from straight dryland country with no infrastructure through to developed irrigation with water entitlements attached.
That all comes down to one thing.
Water.
As Bob Katter said, all we need is a bit of rain.
Some may or may not agree, but I respect that bloke.
The reason why is because he is a straight shooter.
If he does not like it, he will tell you.
Anyway, moving on.
Let me break this down for anyone reading who wants to understand the actual yield difference, because I think it matters.
Dryland cotton across southern Queensland and northern NSW, your Brookstead, Mungindi and Bellata type country, might sit around 3.2 to 3.6 bales per hectare on a standard year.
A good year with well-timed storms might crack 4.5 to 6 bales.
Irrigated cotton, your Goondiwindi, St George and Dirranbandi style developed country with water entitlements, could be averaging around 10 to 12 bales per hectare.
That is roughly three times the dryland yield.
At the 2025/26 pricing assumptions from CottonInfo’s industry gross margin budgets, cotton pricing and cost assumptions can be used as a guide for rough planning only.
That means dryland and irrigated cotton can produce very different gross income and gross margin outcomes, even before you start talking about land price, overheads, staff, machinery, debt, water and seasonal risk.
I am not going to sit here and pretend to know what cotton country costs or what the return on investment looks like for buying a farm.
That is banker and accountant territory, and every property is different.
What I can say is the yield difference between dryland and irrigated is massive, the pricing is publicly available through CottonInfo, and the whole equation hinges on water.
No water, no cotton.
That is the reality of it.
That is the reality of farming.
Use CottonInfo’s current gross margin budgets as a guide only.
Use your own yield, water, picking, cartage, ginning, input, finance and overhead costs before making decisions.
This article is a yarn and thought starter, not financial advice.
At Perry Farming, they are running two of the newer series John Deere CP770 cotton pickers.
Everything they run is fairly modern.
Downtime is a big killer.
Having newer gear with extended warranty packages and having RDO chasing them around the countryside is a really good thing.
Before the 770s, they ran two of the early model John Deere 7760s.
Henry said the 7760 was an unreal machine.
For one year, they had three.
Three was a headache.
If you have three, you may as well have five, with the extra air compressors, light towers, water trucks and all the support gear that comes with running a third unit.
Two is Perry Farming’s magic number.
The 7760s were amazing machines for what they were, but the 770s are the next step up.
Quicker to bale, quicker to wrap, quicker to eject, you can pick quicker, and the heads spin faster.
They have the newer cab on them, so the boys driving them love that.
Then there is the bale weight.
The 7760s used to do about 2 to 2.5 tonnes per bale.
The CP770s are coming out at 2.8 to 3 tonnes.
That saves on wrap, transport cost and fuel.
You can save yourself on a bit of everything with these newer pickers.
Henry reckons the two 770s are probably equivalent to three 7760s.
The jury is still out on that statement, and there will be a lot of people who say there is nothing wrong with the 7760s.
They are right.
There is nothing wrong with them.
They still pick cotton, and they still wrap the white stuff in yellow, pink or purple, whatever wrap you have got.
But being quicker, more efficient and making bigger bales, that is the difference over five years of technology.
This is where it gets interesting for me, because we see the same logic in the harvest contracting game with headers.
I wrote about this in detail in Marketing for Harvest Contractors.
At Broadacre Contracting, we work across both industries, so we see the patterns.
I actually see this across all farming.
We saw the same thing with Kanimbla Contracting and their New Holland CRS headers where the machine setup was the sweet spot for their program.
Just recently, I jumped on a podcast with the Catch My Drift crew based in Forbes NSW.
Greeny asked me whether I feel the new paraquat restriction will create more opportunity and work for camera sprayer contractors, as they can hit at a higher rate.
I did not answer the question until about 10 minutes later, because I went on about how it has created a perfect storm for everyone involved.
In that tangent mission, I stated that as a sector, we are always chasing efficiencies.
Henry has once again identified that here.
The key to the game of farming really is efficiencies.
Two CP770s doing the work of three 7760s.
When I think about what that means operationally, I quickly recognise it is one less machine to service, one less operator to find and pay, one less set of tyres, and less support gear that comes with a third unit.
The air compressors.
The light towers.
The water trucks.
Henry nailed it when he said if you have three, you may as well have five.
There is a tipping point in any operation where adding one more machine does not just add one more machine’s worth of complexity.
It multiplies it.
Henry has identified that tipping point for them as anything over two.
Two is manageable.
The extended warranty and RDO support angle is also interesting.
We all know our risk in ag.
For those that do not know the risk, the risk is high.
A bit of rain at the wrong time means a downgrade, and a downgrade means a loss of money.
How much and how big of a loss?
That is the thing.
We do not know until it hits us.
Because there is so much out of our control, it is important to get the season done as required.
Rain at the right time is the best thing.
Rain at the wrong time is the worst thing.
Hail across the board in any growing season stage is not good.
So it is completely understandable having a dealership be able to keep you running.
Henry mentioned RDO chasing them around the countryside.
I wanted to dive into this because I think a lot of people know their local dealer, but do not really know the business behind it.
Before we get into the big RDO story, I want to say something about dealers more broadly.
In my small time building Broadacre Contracting, I have managed to build a lot of trust as an individual and as a business.
More often than not, we sit down with growers and contractors and talk.
No motive.
Just myself and them over a cuppa or cold beverage.
Sometimes it is even with the furnace in the buggy because I have gone on a mission with them to chase fly-blown sheep.
The conversations are broad, but one conversation that keeps coming around recently is the cost of gear, parts availability and support since COVID.
I do not know the supply chain.
I do not know what dealers do in terms of determining what is on the shelf or what is available.
But I do know the cost of downtime.
The same common thing every highly respected dealer has is a workforce of team members who care and want to problem solve.
That is the answer across the board in ag.
Problem solving.
Wanting to solve your problem.
A parts person who does not understand the pressure can burn a decade of relationships, trust and reliability in a single interaction.
That is how important support is when a grower or contractor is under the pump.
RDO Equipment is one of the world’s largest John Deere dealer groups.
It started in 1968 with Ron Offutt, a 26-year-old potato farmer farming alongside his father in Moorhead, Minnesota, USA.
The bloke was renting John Deere gear from his local dealer in nearby Casselton, North Dakota, got offered the chance to buy that dealership, and said yes.
One store turned into a massive operation.
I find it interesting that the foundation of one of the world’s largest machinery dealer groups began with a farmer who rented gear.
Then he ended up owning the place he was renting from.
There is a lesson in that for anyone reading who thinks they are too small or too early in the game to do something big.
Ron was 26, farming potatoes and had a young family.
That is my kind of story.
It actually sounds like my story, or at least I hope it will be.
To be honest, it is not too different to a lot of young blokes and women in ag right now across Australia.
In Australia, the RDO story is a bit different because a lot of you reading this, especially across the Darling Downs, Border Rivers and northern NSW, would remember Vanderfield.
Vanderfield was a Queensland-based John Deere dealer that had been around for decades.
A proper legacy business.
A family name that meant something to a lot of growers and contractors.
RDO bought Vanderfield, then later picked up Chesterfield branches across NSW and QLD.
The Vanderfield and Chesterfield names were eventually replaced with RDO Equipment.
That upset a few people at the time, as it always does when a long-standing name disappears.
I heard about it from a few blokes across the network.
But that is the reality of big business and consolidation in the dealer space.
It happens in every industry, and ag is no different.
The question that matters to growers and contractors is simple: does the service stay the same or get better?
If it does, loyalty will remain, and that is all anyone really needs to care about at the end of the day.
The Goondiwindi branch that Henry and the Perry Farming crew use services the local Goondiwindi and northern NSW region.
That means cotton growers, cotton picking contractors, broadacre croppers and anyone running John Deere gear in the Border Rivers is serviced out of this branch.
When Henry says RDO is chasing them around the countryside, this is the type of support that matters.
Having a dealer in town when you are picking irrigated cotton under pressure from defoliation windows and weather events is a massive advantage.
For cotton growers and contractors who are not based in Goondiwindi, RDO also has branches across major agriculture regions, including places like Dalby, Toowoomba, Moree, Emerald and Inverell.
Across the cotton belt from the Darling Downs through Cecil Plains, Dalby and Condamine, down through Goondiwindi and the Border Rivers, across to St George and Dirranbandi, south into Moree, Narrabri, Wee Waa and Boggabri, dealer support becomes part of the operational risk calculation.
It is not one bloke in a ute.
It is the parts, service and network behind the operation.
For a cotton picking contractor running two CP770s worth serious money, that network is the safety net between a profitable season and a disaster.
I do not have a relationship with RDO.
Broadacre Contracting is not sponsored by them, not paid by them, and I am not here to sell their services.
I am just reporting what Henry told me, what I found online, and what I think is useful for readers to know.
If you use RDO and love them, good on you.
If you use Hutcheon and Pearce, AFGRI, Titan Machinery, or any other dealer and love them, good on you too.
The point of this side mission was to educate, not to push anyone in a direction.
What matters for anyone running cotton pickers, headers, sprayers or any high-value gear in the Goondiwindi, St George, Dirranbandi, Thallon, Moree, Narrabri, Wee Waa or Dalby regions is knowing your dealer options and what their network looks like.
When a CP770 goes down mid-pick and you need a part yesterday, the size and capability of your dealer’s network matters.
That is not an opinion.
That is just how it works.
And for dealers reading this, here is my open invitation.
If you want Broadacre Contracting to feature your dealership, your network, your capabilities, and your service for the growers and contractors in our community, reach out.
I will give you the same fair, honest write-up.
No fluff, no spin, just the facts and my thoughts on it.
Call Dillon on 0439 300 380 or shoot us a message.
We would love to yarn about it.
I would really love the opportunity for RDO to bring the story to the Broadacre Contracting camera lens.
I would love for the team to explain, give us insights, and show the sector what most growers and contractors do not get to see.
Right, side mission complete.
Compass away.
Let us get back on track.
Broadacre Contracting operates a verified contractor directory that connects growers directly with cotton picking contractors across southern Queensland and northern New South Wales.
Here is how it works.
You post a job on the Broadacre Contracting website.
An instant alert goes out to verified cotton contractors covering your region.
Your phone rings.
Direct contact between you and the contractor.
We do not take commissions, we do not get in the middle of your pricing, and we do not broker the deal.
We connect you with accountable operators and let you sort the rest out between yourselves.
We cover cotton picking contractors across Goondiwindi, St George, Dirranbandi, Thallon, Mungindi, Talwood, Toobeah, Moree, Narrabri, Wee Waa, Boggabri, North Star, Boomi, Garah, Pallamallawa, Bellata, Collarenebri, Burren Junction, Cecil Plains, Dalby, Condamine, Meandarra, Texas, Inglewood, Yelarbon, Bungunya and anywhere else in Australia.
If you have been burned before by a cotton contractor who did not show up, left modules in the wrong spots, picked dirty, or ghosted you mid-season, Broadacre Contracting is the alternative.
Our verification process and accountability standards exist specifically because of those situations.
You can also browse equipment listings to see what is available in your area.
Give Dillon a call on 0439 300 380 from 6am to 9pm.
We would love to have a yarn about your cotton program and connect you with the right operator.
These resources may help growers and contractors watch the episode, find cotton picking contractors, post a job or understand cotton gross margin assumptions and dealer support.
If you are looking for a cotton picking contractor, cotton stripper, chaser support, module handling or accountable cotton harvest operators across southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, Broadacre Contracting gives you a clearer place to start.
Watch the Perry Farming episode, browse cotton picking listings or post a tender so verified contractors can see the job and contact you directly.
Call Dillon at Broadacre Contracting on 0439 300 380. Broadacre connects growers with verified cotton picking contractors across Goondiwindi, St George, Dirranbandi, Mungindi, Moree, Narrabri and surrounding cotton regions. You can also post a job on the Broadacre Contracting website and receive direct responses from contractors in your area.
The fastest way is to call Broadacre Contracting on 0439 300 380. Tell us your location, your hectares, your timing and what gear you need, and we can help connect you directly with a verified cotton picking contractor covering your region.
Cotton picking contractors based in and around Goondiwindi can cover the Border Rivers region, including St George, Dirranbandi, Thallon, Talwood, Toobeah, Mungindi, and south into Moree, Boomi, North Star, Garah, Narrabri, Wee Waa, Boggabri and the broader Gwydir and Namoi valleys.
Perry Farming is a cotton operation based around Goondiwindi QLD. The Perry family has roots at Brookstead on the Darling Downs and has been around Goondiwindi since the early 1990s, with irrigated cotton now forming a major part of the operation.
In this Talking Gear Tuesday episode, Perry Farming talks through running two John Deere CP770 cotton pickers. The operation also has broadacre gear including headers, spreaders and sprayers.
According to Henry from Perry Farming, the CP770 is quicker to bale, quicker to wrap, quicker to eject and can produce heavier round modules than the older 7760s. He said their CP770s are producing around 2.8 to 3 tonne bales compared with roughly 2 to 2.5 tonnes from the 7760s.
Cotton is either picked or stripped depending on the variety, region and harvesting setup. Picking uses spindle pickers to remove lint from the boll while leaving more of the plant behind. Stripping removes more of the boll and plant material. Different gear and regions suit different approaches.
Broadacre Contracting is based at Corowa NSW and operates across major agricultural regions in Australia. Broadacre has cotton picking contractors and cotton harvest listings relevant to Goondiwindi, St George, Dirranbandi, Moree, Narrabri, Wee Waa and the Darling Downs.
RDO Equipment operates the John Deere dealership in Goondiwindi. In this episode, Henry from Perry Farming talks about RDO support being important to keeping their cotton pickers running during the season.
Broadacre helps cotton growers by connecting them directly with verified cotton picking contractors. Growers can call Dillon, browse listings or post a tender so available contractors can contact them directly without Broadacre taking a commission or sitting in the middle of the deal.
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Join for a laugh and to have a yarn! Cheers.