Cotton Producers Hope For Big Changes In 2007
March 5, 2009 While scribbling last month on the final page of my 2006 desktop calendar, I realized there were a couple of things I needed to do to get ready for 2007. First (and definitely easiest to accomplish), I needed to get a new calendar. No problem – I made a trip to Office Depot and checked it off my list.
What came next is always a little more difficult, but it’s something I do every year. I looked at the goals that I set for 2006 and considered what goals I would work toward for 2007. One thing I always do is put these goals to paper. There is something about seeing them in my own handwriting that gives me ownership and makes me want to work diligently toward success.
Personal goals aside, Cotton Grower has a few goals of its own for 2007. We want to continue to bring you the best information and analysis to aid in your agronomic decisions. We’ll continue to provide commentary on trends and issues that impact your farm and livelihood. In the upcoming year, some of the big issues we will focus on are the upcoming Farm Bill, the future of sustainable agriculture, and the increasing impact the global cotton markets have on domestic issues. Of course, we will always strive to bring you the latest information on products, trends and techniques that can bring you success.
In this month’s Heard Round the Belt, we asked producers what their No. 1 goal was for 2007. Like all business people, cotton growers have an underlying goal, and I was reminded by it while talking to a lady who answered the phone at a grower’s office.
Scott Wiggers
Winnsboro, LA
Right now, I am just trying to finish up 2006. I don’t know if I would characterize this as my No. 1 goal, but I would like to pick a whole crop without losing 25%-75% of it to rain. The biggest obstacle to profits that we have had for the last two years has been weather-related events. If we can just get our crops harvested, that would be a major goal for us because we’ve had two really good crops. The problem has been too much rain at the wrong time. The timing has been terrible for us. Like I said, we had good crops – we were probably on pace for a 1,000-pound crop across the board for us, and that’s pretty good for the Macon Ridge.
One thing we are moving into is working toward using some precision ag. That is one thing we are getting ready to explore more. So I guess a goal would be to use precision ag to manage inputs and to increase profits. We are not far along, and it’s a very daunting thing to try and dive off into, but we’re going to dive in pretty strong in the next three years.
Ricky Bearden
Plains, TX
My biggest goal is to have a crop. Most of my land is dryland, and we didn’t have any rain to get any dryland going last year, so I am hoping this year that God smiles on us, gives us a planting rain, and we are able to produce a crop. I think a lot of dryland people are that way because we had very little rain to get any cotton up, and then it was dry through the growing season. Producers are called that for a reason, they like to produce – that’s just the short and the long of it. Whatever it is, they want to make a crop.
We’ll do our part as far as land preparation and that type thing. As soon as we’re through harvesting, what we are going to start doing is some land preparation where we can. Depending on what the conditions are, we will put the inputs in on the front end, or we will wait more until the tail end or maybe wait until spring to put things in. Overall, producers know what they need to do to their land if they have been in this business very long. They know what needs to be done, and they take care of it as a general rule.
I went to an insurance conference, and they showed Yoakum County to be one of the most volatile places in the country to grow cotton. We can have a good crop, or we can not have a crop at all. It can go either way, and that is part of what we have to deal with. That is why we on the plains have fought so hard for disaster programs and continue to always make federal crop insurance better. We are excited that one of the things that is being talked about in the new Farm Bill is a permanent disaster program, and we hope to have some input on that. Hopefully we will have the right input that will help everybody.
A lot of people also hope that cotton will follow some of these other commodity prices and hopefully the cotton will come up too. I have heard all of my life since I was growing up that this was a “next year” country, and the more I talk to people I realize that is a common deal across all of agriculture. People do this for more than one year at a time. If we didn’t, we would have all quit a long time ago.
Jay Hardwick
Newellton, LA
For the short term, of course, I would like to see a recovery in cotton pricing in order to continue to planting cotton. I think we might be getting to the point where we might be struggling to keep our cotton infrastructure in place – in Lousiana that means our gins and warehouses where growers by and large have an ownership in those entities. If production slips below a critical area for a long time, then there will be competition with grains. Right now one can price out grains at a profitable level until 2009, and there seems to be a lot of growers looking at that. A lot of those areas are going to be secured to grains and that will come at a cost to something – it could be soybeans, an alternate grain, or it could be cotton acres. So I would like to see price recovery so that we can keep our core acres in the long term so that we can keep our industry viable.
The other thing that concerns me is that we continue to find ways to merchandize our crop successfully worldwide, because 60%-70% of what we are producing as an industry is finding its home overseas. In the long term, we need to be very mindful of that as producers and find every opportunity we can to successfully help the merchant community merchandise this crop internationally. That’s new territory. Instead of the merchant being an adversary, we need to look at him as being a partner.
Then of course you have all the flurry, anticipation, and anxiety this year about farm law coming up and how radically that is going to be looked at. By and large, I think it is safe to say that 15%, to maybe 25%, in some cases of farm revenue is made from the Federal Treasury through our safety net. Cotton is particularly in the throes this year because it is at such a depressed price, and the safety net, as designed, is working.It is viable, it is healthy, and it is working by keeping this industry at a temporary position while giving it the ability to rebound.
It is a pretty complex set of circumstances to look at compared to the old farm days when we just had a strong domestic program with strong domestic consumption. We had a guaranteed price; life was simple and life was beautiful.
“Our No. 1 goal is what everybody wants. We want to make money,” she said.
Simply said, but in cotton farming, not as simply done.
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