The 2022-crop is one for the record books — and not one that will soon be forgotten.
“Cotton production has been decimated by drought and extreme heat this year, costing Texas High Plains farmers and other agricultural industries at least $2 billion, according to one estimate,” Jayme Lozano wrote for the Texas Tribune in August of last year.
Producers in the High Plains region abandoned more than 72% of planted acres due to the persistent drought and utter lack of subsoil moisture. While that’s not something anyone wants to go through, the weather is one of those facets outside a grower’s control. Thankfully, risk management tools through the Farm Bill, in addition to recently administered disaster assistance through “ad hoc” programming, have kept producers afloat especially in a year like 2022 where Mother Nature simply didn’t want to cooperate during the growing season.
Unfortunately, other segments of the cotton industry don’t have the same risk management tools in place to weather the kind of loss that was experienced in the 2022 cropping season.
According to an August 2022 study from the Texas Tech University International Center for Agricultural Competitiveness, and source of the estimate given above, cotton gins in the PCG service region were projected to lose more than $230 million in working capital.
In an effort to relieve some of the financial strain and distress of 2022 on the cotton industry, more specifically cotton infrastructure, Plains Cotton Growers made an initial attempt to secure federal disaster assistance for cotton infrastructure in the FY20222023 spending package.
“In a year like 2022, when cotton production volume is extraordinarily low, it negatively impacts every segment of the cotton industry,” said Kody Bessent PCG CEO. “In order to maintain our supply chain resiliency across all cotton segments, we’d like to see our infrastructure colleagues provided with some funding assistance to keep their doors open in 2023, assuming they suffered a loss in 2022.”
Unfortunately, the federal attempt was thwarted last minute, so PCG pivoted with our best foot forward and brought it to the state Capitol’s attention at the beginning of the 88th Texas Legislature.
The severity of the drought of 2022 on the Texas cotton industry — specifically cotton infrastructure — due to a lack of production or throughput, has had and will have a long-term effect on not only producers but infrastructure as a whole.
According to recent analysis by the American Farm Bureau, Texas suffered the most significant weather-related damage to crops of all U.S. states with over $6.4 billion in incurred losses. These losses were primarily made up of $2.9 billion in damages to cotton in 2022 mainly attributed to widespread exceptional drought conditions.
Furthermore, according to USDA 2022 crop acreage certification data (578 data), Texas planted 7,722,964 acres of cotton in 2022, and failed or did not take to harvest 3,775,591 of those acres — creating an abandonment rate of 49.7%. Compare that to the High Plains region (where on average 60% of all cotton is grown in Texas) experiencing a 72.3% acreage abandonment rate in 2022 — surpassing 2011 failed acreage, the former benchmark for historic drought.
A budget rider is currently being advocated for in the Texas Senate and House that would establish a one-time block grant program for cotton infrastructure to help ease some of the strain from financial losses credited to the 2022 crop year.
Assuming this initiative comes to fruition, an entity in the cotton infrastructure segment — located in a county identified by the U.S. Drought Monitor as having a D2 (Extreme Drought) for eight consecutive weeks or D3 (Exceptional Drought) during calendar year 2022 — that experienced a 30% loss or greater in revenue from 2021 to 2022, could receive up to $500,000 in agriculture disaster relief to put toward fixed costs.
We all need each other in this industry and the 2022-crop year definitely highlights that. PCG will continue to strive to make headway through Congress and our state Legislature to support cotton producers as well as our infrastructure segments during these challenging times. If you have any questions or would like to know how you can support this effort, please call the office: 806792-4904.