Cotton Marketer of the Year

“In 2008, Max’s fixations began at around 78 cents per pounds and it went all the way up into the 90s. His average, after basis, was over 85 cents per pound,” said Dr. O. A. Cleveland at the award ceremony. “As he began looking at 2009, he wanted to book some for $1, but he just messed up and only got 98 cents. Maybe we ought to give this award to him again next year.”

In accepting the award, Koepnick acknowledged all of the cotton associations that so effectively represent the industry. “I don’t know if all of us realize and appreciate what these associations do to help the cotton industry,” he said. “The world we have today is quite small and we need all the people these associations deal with on our side. Water has gotten political. Pricing is political. Marketing is political. Sometimes we have to give up some things we might not want to, but we have to consider what we might gain.”

Koepnick was nominated by Paul Bush, Calcot’s Vice President for Arizona, Southern California and South Texas. Based in Bakersfield, CA, Calcot, Ltd. is in its 81st year as a cotton marketing cooperative, owned by select cotton producers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

“I’ve known Max since I joined Calcot about 11 years ago,” Bush said. “He’s always used our call pool, where a grower can market through us but kind of on their own, so to speak, and he puts some in our seasonal pool. “Some years you do very well and some years you don’t – that’s marketing. This year, Max did very well,” he continued. “Over the years he has become more intuitive on the market and the tools that we have to offer to him. And he certainly took advantage of them this year.”

Bush gives Koepnick credit for making most of the marketing decisions on both his 2008 and ’09 crops. “Back in February and March when we had the big run up in prices, he took the initiative to call me about every other day to ask me about the market. He was good about not being too aggressive at first. He sold some in the 70s, and as it went up, he sold a little bit more. He sold some in the 90s. And that’s what you’re supposed to do. Some growers can hit the top of the market, but it’s usually luck.”

By riding the rising tide of the market and watching it daily as he made his trades, Koepnick did hit the top, or close to it, as Dr. Cleveland said. There are farmers all over the Cotton Belt who wanted $1, but all of them would have gladly settled for 98 cents.

“A lot of times you tell yourself that you have money made, but you want that 2 cents more. Waiting on 2 cents used to cost me a lot of money. Instead of the market going up 2 more cents, it went down 20 cents. I’ve decided that I am not going to worry about that last 2 cents.”

“Max is also a good farmer,” Bush said. “It’s nice to see a guy hit a home run when he has been in business for all those years and with the character he has.”

Learning Curves

“I’ve been trying to market my cotton this way for probably the last 10 to 15 years,” Koepnick said. “Before that, I didn’t pay as close attention to it and it probably cost me money. It was a learning curve.”

Koepnick said his motivation to learn as much as he could about the markets was easy. “Money,” he said. “I wanted to survive. When you think you can do better than someone who is doing it for you, it’s time to go do it. You have to do it if things tighten up.”

Koepnick said that sometimes hindsight being 20-20 is not a bad thing. “I look back to what our average selling price was over the years and how we got it,” he explained. ”That’s my guideline. I know where I have been and I look at years where I made a little and years when I didn’t. I work from there.”

And at the end of each production year, Koepnick breaks down everything he did to see what he could have done better, and what he considered acceptable. “We look at everything,” he said. “What did we do on the farm? What was our yield? What was our final selling price? I think in terms of being outside the government program and where you are without it. I know from past years that most of the time we’re around 68 cents, so I know that when it gets into that range, it’s time to start paying attention.”

Koepnick also studies fundamentals – carryover, world supply, consumption, etc. “I want to know everything I can about what will have a bearing on the market,” he explained.

Upland vs. Pima

Arizona is one of the prime areas of Pima production, but over the years Koepnick has learned it’s not for him. “I grow all Upland now, but I used to grow half-and-half. At one time I figured I’d die growing Pima, and I almost did,” he said. “I thought I was going to starve to death.”

Cleveland calls Phoenix “a suburb of Queen Creek” and Koepnick believes Phoenix’s urban sprawl has created a change in the climate. “We have so much urbanization – houses, asphalt – that our nights were not cooling off enough. If you don’t have cool nights, you can’t grow Pima,” he explained. “We started out making 1,200 or 1,500 pounds of Pima, and as it changed, we had a hard time making 800 to 1,000 pounds. You can’t survive with that.”

Koepnick averages nearly 4 bales per Upland acre, using furrow irrigation. His acreage has run as high as 2,800, but is now in the 2,000-acre range.

And the lowest? “Forty odd years ago I had 160,” he said.

Koepnick grew up on a farm in the Slocum/Elkhart area of east Texas. “My dad tried to grow a little cotton, but he was not successful at it,” he said. “So he tried peanuts and did better with them, but I swore I’d never farm.”

So for the next 10 years, he ran a machine shop business.

Koepnick reconsidered farming when he married a widow who was struggling to make a go of it on land her late husband farmed.

“I thought maybe I could fix it,” he said. My bookkeeper and banker told me to forget it ― you’ll never pay it out. So I asked them for 7 years to pay it out. It took me 14 years.”

‘Cause Uncle Sam Told Me To

Koepnick moved to Arizona for one reason: “Uncle Sam told me to report,” he said. “They gave me a duffle bag and a guy with a star on his shoulder said they were going to send me to Korea. I saluted him and said ‘yes, sir.’” But instead, he went to Williams Field Air Force Base in Maricopa, AZ. “When I got out, I decided to stay in Arizona.”

Shortly after, “I got mixed up in farming and I’ve been playing in the dirt ever since,” Koepnick said. “I’ve been growing cotton, cotton, cotton, every year. I don’t grow anything else. There will always be cotton in America as long as I am alive. It’s our business and if we don’t take care of it, we’ll all be looking for a job. I don’t have all the answers, but we can’t get out heads stuck in the mud. We have to get up every day and try to find a way to get through until the next day.”

His sister Patricia Little’s involvement with the farming operation is quite literally up in the air.

“She has made a plane ride out here at least every month since 1995. She lives in Austin and comes out here to keep the books and keep me out of jail.”

Her husband Clyde is also a cotton farmer.