Due to drought conditions, the United States Department of Agriculture predicted a smaller cotton crop for 2022, with local gins up and running at a reduced rate.
Guyle Roberson, CEO of the Texas Producers Cooperative in Sudan, said the cotton crop could not get started because of the lack of rain over the summer.
“We just didn’t get a good crop started. The dryness, the drought, didn’t even give us a good chance to get a crop started and that flowed over to harvest time. I’m going to say, most of the pressures...the area gins around are probably going to be down 75 percent to 80 percent of their average,” Roberson said.
As of Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, the local gins have reported a significantly smaller cotton crop production compared to Dec. 1, 2021.
Roberson said his co-op reported 4,546 bales ginned with 193 modules left to go. Compared to 45,189 bales ginned and 3,386 left last year, a decrease of about 90 percent.
The Spade Coop Gin reported 1,655 bales of cotton ginned, with an unknown amount of modules, at that time. Compared to last year’s 22,500 bales and 1,550 modules, are always welcome.
almost a 93 percent decrease.
The Skyland Grain Gin in Olton has seen around a 79 percent decrease since last year. They have reported 11,143 bales ginned with “a little ways to go,” according to a Skyland representative. In 2021, they reported 52,887 bales ginned with 900 modules left.
A Springlake- Earth Cotton Growers representative said they will start ginning Monday, Nov. 21, 2022 and are projected to gin about 5,100 bales. Last year, they ginned 6,064 bales and 833 modules, for roughly a 16 percent decrease.
Roberson said he believes they are starting to get into the good part of the season.
“What we believe right now is that we’re just now starting to get it the beginning stages of a good harvest season. We’ve got more cotton that’s ready to be harvested, mainly because of the freeze that we had. We had a good freeze. I think that we’re just now starting to get into the good part of the season, where we got more people out in the fields. It’s going to be good,” he said.
Roberson said most producers in the area have a safety net, either through insurance or by planting another crop.
“Most of the producers have a safety net that will protect them. As far as financially, it doesn’t fix a lot, but it may keep someone from devastating their business. There’s insurance programs out there and most producers nowadays will hop-to to protect some of their...livelihood and they start putting in crops that will help save [them] from being a complete loss,” Roberson said.
Two of the key safety net insurance programs is the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs, according to the USDA.
The ARC program is an income support program that provides payments when actual crop revenue declines below a specified guaranteed level. The PLC program provides income support payments when the effective price for a covered commodity falls below its effective reference price. The overview of the programs can be found on the USDA Farm Service Agency website.
Curtis Stewart, with the Spade Co-Op Gin, said farmers will plant a secondary crop when something like this happens.
“There were some secondary crops planted, some of it was too dry for a lot of those. There was some haygrazer and some milo planted,” Stewart said.
Roberson said that he does not think this will mean devastation for every one and he believes the community has the ability to think things out.
“I believe that we’re a community and...we can think things out. I do not think that this is a devastation to everybody. We all trust that the Lord is going to take care of us and we’re just going to do the best we can. It’s just like my dad said: you do the best that you can in whatever you do and the rest will take care of itself. That’s kind of the position that we’re in,” Roberson said.