A Higher Power
March 18, 2009 Van Murphy says he owes a great deal of his personal and professional success to a higher power.
On the personal side, he continues, “Faith is a large part of my life. Faith in the Lord.”
And professionally, he adds, “I need to give the Lord credit. He has blessed BCT Gin – this is our 26th crop and we’ve seen some tough times, but unity has had a lot to do with our success.”
Murphy is the first and only Executive Manager of BCT Gin Co., Inc. BCT stands for Brooks, Colquitt and Thomas Counties – the three counties it originally served.
“BCT started in 1983 with 36 stockholders who were from those counties,” Murphy explains. “I’ve always said BCT was started so I would have a place to work.”
And work he did – not only for the gin company and on his farm, but for the entire cotton industry, as well. Murphy has been a Cotton Board director for 13 years, currently sits on the Executive Committee, and serves as Chairman of the Operations Committee. He is Chairman of the Board and a past president of the National Cotton Ginners Association and has been active in the National Cotton Council. Murphy is in his second year of a 2 year term as president of the Southeastern Cotton Ginners Association and is a past Southeast Ginner of the Year.
Murphy was an ’89-’90 member of the DuPont Leadership Class. “It was a great experience,” he says. “It would have taken me 20 years to meet the people I did and learn as much as I learned.”
For his outstanding and unselfish contributions to the cotton industry, the staff of Cotton Grower takes great pleasure in naming Van Murphy of Quitman, GA, our 2008 Cotton Achievement Award Winner.at the Cotton Grower Achievement Award Luncheon.
Cotton, Cows and Horses
Murphy raises 300 acres of cotton, 50 acres of peanuts, and 20 acres of hay. He also has a cattle farm with 25 brood cows, and his wife Julie has a quarter horse operation. “I’ve been married to Julie for 32 years and she has been the best thing that has happened to me.” Murphy says. He has a son, Matt (26), and a daughter, Megan Biles (24). Megan has two children – Jackson (18 months) and Julie Grace, a newborn. “They are the light of my life,” Murphy adds.
Born and raised in Boston, GA, southeast of Thomasville, Murphy says with tongue in cheek, “It’s the second largest Boston in the United States – 1,500 people.”
He attended Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, GA, before going to work for the Federal and State Inspection Service, inspecting all commodities. He then joined Boston Farm Center, where he worked for 5 years.
“That’s about the time Jimmy Carter nearly put us all out of business with embargoes.” says Murphy. In 1979, in response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, President and fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter ordered a grain embargo against the USSR in the hopes of starving it into pulling out its troops. What the embargo actually did was cause a massive oversupply of grains in the U.S., driving many of the country’s grain farmers into bankruptcy.
Just a couple of years later, cotton acreage in Georgia was less than 100,000 acres and Murphy says it could have been closer to 50,000. “But cotton started coming back in the mid-80s and it really helped a lot of farmers stay in business,” he says. “I think cotton brought young farmers into the business. But we went through a period in the late 80s and early 90s, where if you had kids, you didn’t want them to farm. Then by the mid-90s, profitability came back and we had several families with another generation coming back to the farm. We didn’t think that would ever happen.”
Going Around, Coming Around
Of the segments of the cotton industry, none has been hit harder over the past 2 years than ginners.
But in agriculture, what goes around almost always comes around. “We have to have faith in the cotton business and I believe south Georgia has as good of an opportunity to grow cotton as anywhere in the world,” Murphy says. “Our land prices are not as high as they are in other places and we have the water available to us. I think that is going to become more of an asset to us as times go by. We have the potential for high production.”
In years past, Georgia and Mississippi have swapped back and forth for the number two spot in cotton acreage behind Texas, with each planting around 1.5 million acres. This past year, Georgia had a fraction over 1 million acres; Mississippi had slightly over a third of that. “If something doesn’t change, we could have less than 500,000 acres of cotton in Georgia next year,” says Murphy. “Hopefully something will change, and I want to be as positive as I can be, but you have to look at the facts.”
Georgia is the number one producer of peanuts in the nation and had a bumper crop in 2008. “We had peanuts yields that we have never seen before – in excess of 2 tons to 5,000 pounds per acre,” Murphy explains. “Growers made money on peanuts because we had a lot of $500 per ton contracts.”
For peanuts and cotton, rotation is a case of mutualism. As a legume, peanuts leave nitrogen in the soil that cotton uses. Cotton is not a host for some diseases that damage peanuts.
The bumper peanut crop of 2008 and rotation could drive some acreage back into cotton in 2009. “We made such good yields with peanuts that supply is going to carryover into the needs for next year. We don’t see shellers fighting for acres in 2009,” Murphy says. “That’s what happened in 2008 – shellers had to buy those acres to keep them out of cotton. If a farmer can get financing, it could drive acreage back into cotton. But that’s the thing – a farmer has to sit down and show a plan to his banker and it’s going to be hard to show a payback.”
Cotton’s Comeback?
Everyone in the cotton industry is affected by the downturn in prices and acreage and there is no reason to belabor the point. So exactly what will it take to send cotton acreage back up?
“We have to see a price increase. We’ve got to get the price back up to where it’s above production costs,” says Murphy. “I think what will help is for the rest of the world to cut back on cotton acres so that we will have opportunities. I think we may see that in Brazil – they are having to make their decisions now.”
Some estimates are that Brazil could cut cotton acreage by 50%.
A weak world economy has hurt mill demand and weak mill demand has in turn hurt cotton prices. “I think at least 80% of Georgia’s cotton is exported, so that is our market,” Murphy says. “We have got to get demand back up, and that will depend on the general economy.
“We’ve had struggles and have faced hard times in agriculture, but farmers have a way of hanging on. They buckle down when they have to and make it go,” Murphy continues. “Our farmers are as good as they are anywhere in the world.”
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