MINING billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture has acquired three irrigated cropping farms spanning 6,856 hectares on the NSW northwestern slopes in a deal reportedly worth about $150 million. Of the total land, about 4,300 hectares is developed to irrigation, and the properties’ annual production averages between 25,000 and 30,000 cotton bales. A key feature of the aggregation is the sizeable water entitlements, with a combined allocation of 23,000 megalitres and about 7,000 megalitres of groundwater. Hancock Agriculture plans to use the Wee Waa aggregation to produce cotton, and follows its acquisition of the Warra Warra cropping property on Queensland’s Western Downs early this year.