Returning to My Cotton Roots
April 13, 2020 
I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself to some you and to say hello again to old friends and acquaintances as I put my toes back into the world of U.S. cotton after some time being away.
Recently, I joined the team here at Cotton Grower magazine as Editor. This is a second go-around for me, as I was Editor of the magazine for five years in the early 2000s. I am excited to be back.
Cotton is where my roots are. I grew up in Dooly County, GA, where my parents owned an ag chem dealership, cotton warehouses and a peanut buying point. I spent my summers in high school and college scouting cotton for growers in Central Georgia.
Most of the roughly 12 years I’ve been away from cotton has been spent as Editor of Florida Grower magazine. The publication covers citrus, vegetable and other specialty crop production in Florida. When I came to Florida Grower, specialty crops were new to me and there was a lot to learn. But one thing I was immediately stuck by was the similar vibe I felt between cotton and citrus folks. You feel that sense of fraternity that comes with growing a very specialized crop by a relatively small group of people.
Like cotton, citrus has no shortage of challenges, most notably citrus greening disease, which has reduced Florida’s citrus production by more than half since it came on the scene in 2005. Prognosticators at the time of greening’s arrival predicted that trees afflicted by the disease would die within six months and the industry as a whole would soon follow.
Citrus growers, like cotton growers, are a stubborn lot and didn’t take that death sentence lying down. They have developed nutrition and root health regimes that have allowed groves to remain viable. While the industry has changed and has been downsized, the rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated.
I’ve kept up with cotton over the years, but from a distance, so I’ve got some catching up to do. My first foray back into cotton in a real way was attending the National Cotton Council’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans this February. I’ve always found it constructive to keep my ears open for words most often repeated at an event like that to help me get up to speed. The two most uttered words were MFP and coronavirus.
I was not really that aware of market facilitation payments and just how important they have been to the cotton industry. I visited with several growers who told me it was the difference between staying in business or not during market downturns as the trade dispute with China gets sorted out.
Of course, the question in NOLA was: Will there be an MFP 3.0? The answer seems to be wavering between no and maybe at this point. And, it could all depend on the second most repeated word there – coronavirus. It blew any momentum the market enjoyed from Phase I of the China trade agreement right out of the sails.
Where will the coronavirus take us? Nobody knows, and I suspect the picture will be much different when you read this than when I wrote the column in early March. But what I do know is cotton growers are smart, persistent and will find a way to continue to do what they do best – produce the world’s finest renewable fiber.
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