Rain trashes Mid-South cotton
Dec 11, 2009 9:37 AM, By Elton Robinson, Farm Press Editorial Staff
Every year, it’s the same story for Mid-South cotton producers. An average crop just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore.
To offset the significant expense it takes to plant, produce and pick a cotton crop, each and every year, you have to grow one better.
Since 2004, most Mid-South cotton producers have regularly done just that. Beginning in 2004, Arkansas cotton producers had a surprising run of five straight years of average yields exceeding 1,000 pounds. Louisiana increased its average yield every year from 2004 to 2007, going from an average of 867 pounds per acre to 1,034 pounds.
On the other hand, input costs have paralleled those yield increases, keeping profit margins razor thin.
Despite the latter, expectations for 2009 were high, even as the wet spring forced Mid-South producers of cotton, corn, rice and soybeans into some of the latest plantings in recent memory.
Then in September, came a truly miserable two-month stretch of rain, muck and mud that reminded Mid-South agricultural producers once again that providing the world with food, fuel and fiber is one heck of a risky business.
Loss estimates are still being documented, but as of mid-November, losses for all crops in Mississippi and Arkansas totaled almost $800 million, a figure that is sure to rise.
Many Mid-South cotton producers experienced 50 percent reductions in yield, plus quality losses. What makes it worse is that few areas of the Mid-South were spared the ruinous rains. Ask any Mid-South cotton producer and you’ll hear the same answer — this one hurts.
Ben Guthrie, a farm manager on Panola Company, Ltd., near Newellton, La., says it’s difficult to quantify cotton losses because no harvesting occurred prior to the October monsoon which halted harvests and dashed yields.
“We think we lost 300 pounds to 400 pounds of cotton. We believe we had 1,000 pounds to 1,100 pounds on the crop and ended up picking 650 pounds. We had not only hard-locked bolls, but we had a lot of big, fluffy, pickable bolls that shattered on the ground.”
Guthrie said 17 inches of rain fell on the region in October, a month traditionally dedicated to the picking of cotton and harvesting other crops.
For Guthrie, it was the second cotton crop disaster in a row. In 2008, damage caused by two, late-season hurricanes and three tropical storms dropped his average yield to 547 pounds per acre. He was expecting twice as much. “So we made in two years what we normally make in one year.”
On top of that, Guthrie and other producers pumped significant dollars into what were very promising crops. “It’s terrible for the cotton industry in north Louisiana and south Arkansas,” Guthrie said. “We were hoping to use 2009 to help us dig out of a hole.”
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