For some growers in the district it’s cotton picking time and for others, it’s just around the corner.

Cotton picking is in contractor Adam Shields’ blood – his father, Cameron Shields was a cotton picking contractor and innovator who developed the ‘unload-on-the-go boll buggy’ and Mr Shields’ young sons, Ben and Tim also love nothing more than helping out in a cotton field.

Mr Shields has also followed in his father’s footsteps by creating a new innovative machine that is being described as ‘the next generation in cotton module builders’ and is being trialled for the first time this picking season.

“I was born and raised around cotton, my old man was a contractor, he developed the machine that unloads pickers on the move so that was quite an innovation on his behalf,” said Mr Shields.

“This basically complements the boll buggy, keeps conventionals going very efficiently, non-stop and without the cost of wrap.”

“It’s about saving on freight, saving on wrap and saving money,” added cotton farmer David Meppem who is a fan of Mr Shields’ machine.

Currently, when cotton is picked it is pressed into modules or round bales and wrapped in yellow plastic before being transported to a cotton gin for market.

Before the round bale cotton harvester was introduced about 10 years ago, cotton would be picked and go into a basket on the back of a picker, a boll buggy would then pick it up and take it to the module builder where it would be pressed into rectangular modules and then sent off to market.

Mr Shields has built his machine pretty much from scratch and while it produces rectangular bales it does operate differently to the old, rectangular module builders.

“It is smaller but it works faster and there’s less labour,” said Mr Shields.

The cotton is picked, loaded into Mr Shields’ module builder, it then loads and presses the cotton modules itself.

Mr Shields prefers the rectangular modules and has spent the past year working away in his shed on the new machine.

“It’s about taking one step back to take two steps forward,” said Mr Shields.

“We’re bringing back old technology to make things cheaper.

“There’s not one way of looking at this that isn’t a ‘plus’ in comparison to a round baler,” Mr Shields believes.

“Once John Deere stopped making basket pickers they left us with no options,” said Mr Shields.

“We’re not trying to pull round balers out of the market or anything like that, it’s about giving people an option.

“Especially if you’ve got better efficiency – the cost to the farmer is so much less doing it like this and the contractors themselves make more money per acre by doing it this way.

“With round balers – contractors had to drop their rates on a dearer machine and the farmer had to fork out for the wrap so it just didn’t suit some people,” said Mr Shields.

“There is still a lot of people around that are still conventional but because they’ve stopped making the conventional machine they can’t upgrade so eventually their hand is forced to go to rounds (bales) and this is to take that hand away.”

Mr Shields said he also thinks rectangular bales are better to transport because they fit better on the back of a truck.

“You’ve got 15-foot modules, we can get three of them on a 45-foot deck trailer and you’ve got better tonnage, better cartage than you do with a round bale.”

Cotton farmer David Meppem is very impressed with Mr Shields’ innovation.

“I’ll call it the ‘new dinosaur’,” Mr Meppem said when asked if the module builder had a name yet.

“It’s the next generation in module builders but as a 15-foot (rectangular bale).

“It’s able to keep up with a new international, six row conventional picker which should out-pick a bale picker, a John Deere bale picker, in acres per day,” he said.

Mr Shields said he’s also hoping his module builder will be able to keep up with two, four row conventional pickers but that’s still be trialled.

Mr Meppem said it also reduces compaction in the fields.

“At the moment, those basket pickers are probably 18 tonnes in the paddock, the bale picker is 35 to 40 tonnes going up and down the paddock.

“So the bale picker – 40 odd tonne over your paddock. The conventional or basket picker – 20 odd tonne, one pass over the paddock.”

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