In what is believed to be a world first for a cotton producing country, Cotton Australia has launched a data dashboard to transparently report Australian cotton information across a range of metrics including production, yield, quality, and social and environmental sustainability.

Using a combination of Australian cotton industry research and survey data, government and publicly available sources, this user-friendly dashboard contains over 70 data sets, from export market results to progress against sustainability targets, and improvements in farming practices.

The dashboard will be used by the Australian cotton industry to report progress and drive decisions, as well as by the supply chain, brand and retail customers to help them make decisions about Australian cotton as a fibre of choice.

According to project coordinator Brooke Summers, access to accurate, current data has become a critical requirement of the cotton supply chain, particularly with a renewed focus on due diligence, greenwashing and on-product claims.

“Australia’s cotton growers collect a huge amount of data on their farms, as well as contributing to the collection of industry-wide data via a compulsory research and development levy on every bale of cotton they grow,” Cotton Australia’s Brooke Summers said.

“Traditionally this data has driven on-farm decisions that have increased efficiencies and achieved sustainability outcomes, and now our customers want to understand this story too. The dashboard is a first step in collating the information we currently have in one place to provide a single source of truth for Australian cotton data.

“The process allowed our industry to together decide the most relevant data to report, the best available source and the best metric to use, and this has also helped us identify gaps and other requirements for the future.

“This is just a start, we know there are gaps and there is more work to do, but we didn’t want perfect to be the enemy of good.

“We had incredible cooperation from a wide range of participating organisations including the Cotton Research and Development Corporation, Cotton Australia, the Australian Cotton Shippers Association, International Cotton Advisory Committee, Cotton Seed Distributors and Bayer CropScience which made this project possible,” she said.

Users can access up to date information, links and sources on topics such as water use efficiency and pesticide use, uptake of minimum tillage and integrated pest management, the major markets for Australian cotton and the amount of sustainably-certified cotton grown each year.

Developers, Sentient Dynamics, said the project was a novel approach. “As a web developer passionate about sustainability, I had been eagerly awaiting a project like the Cotton Data Dashboard. This site represents a significant effort, both in terms of the hard work and dedication poured into its creation, as well as its mission to serve as a centralised platform for visualising Australia's cotton data and sustainable journey,” Azure Developer Safwan Karim said.

The Australian Cotton Data Dashboard was made possible with funding from the Australian Government’s ATMAC program. The dashboard can be accessed at www.cottondata.com.au and is maintained by Cotton Australia.