Cotton Australia, CRDC and ACSA came together this week to consider research and recommendations, grower and industry feedback on key topics in the Australian Cotton Strategic Roadmap including the future of myBMP, traceability, data and human rights.

Over 320 growers and industry provided their feedback as part of the recent Roadmap Roadshow in 13 cotton regions, and this was a major consideration in planning the next steps.

An update on the CRDC Data Platform, research projects on traceability and human rights and a full review of the myBMP program were presented to workshop participants that included Directors and staff from each industry organisation. Solutions were then workshopped in smaller groups to map the next steps,” Cotton Australia CEO Adam Kay said.

“It was an intense two days of discussion, with lots of agreement on many of the topics and recommendations. We essentially landed with the need for a much clearer value proposition, particularly for growers who will be at least partially funding the work through Cotton Australia and CRDC.

“There’s no doubt that market access and a per bale premium is what growers want to see, but that’s difficult to quantify and hard for industry organisations to deliver and so we need to do more work on identifying value, economic modelling, business cases and looking at alternative models that can deliver value in different ways for programs like myBMP and traceability.

“Another clear piece of feedback from growers is agreement that the Roadmap is needed, but that if we’re going to do things differently, it needs to be done with integrity and so taking some extra time to clearly identify value is really important,” Adam said.

It is expected that the value proposition research will be completed in time for a joint meeting of the CRDC and Cotton Australia Boards in February 2026 and in the meantime, further work will be done to assess myBMP criteria and governance, the data platform project is underway and there were some clear actions around human rights for each organisation to take forward.