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Wednesday, October 29, 2008 10:45 AM Cotton harvest down this year By Eddie Fitzgerald | Times Staff Writer Farmers are finishing up this year's cotton harvest with smaller yields and income than they had hoped for. Michael Boyette of Rock Ridge Farms in Wilson County said it will be just an average cotton crop this year. Rock Ridge Farms had about 1,200 acres of cotton this season, which is down from past years. "The price is so low on cotton and the input costs are so high on it that you've got to make some really big yields to break even," Boyette said. It cost about $500 to plant one acre of cotton in the county, Boyette said. That includes fertilizer, land rent and ginning. At the current price for cotton a farmer would only get about $325 per 500-pound bale. Farmers in Wilson County typically produce a bale and a half of cotton per acre. Norman Harrell, agriculture extension agent, said the low cotton prices are putting a strain on farmers. "Even with an average yield, the low cotton prices are going to make it so farmers could very easily lose money on cotton this year," he said. Harrell said a farmer could easily sink $500,000 into a 1,000-acre cotton crop. "You can see where they could lose a lot of money in a hurry," he said. However, cotton growers do get a government subsidy if cotton prices are down. Wilson County farmers are about 75 percent finished with the cotton harvest this year, Harrell said. "Most of the growers I have talked to say they are getting yields ranging from 700 to 900 pounds of lent per acre," he said. "The growers we have today are very good managers of cotton, but the weather has a pretty large impact on yields. What really hurt the cotton crop this year from being an outstanding crop is we missed some rains in August. At one point we had the potential to have a great cotton crop." Wilson County farmers planted 12,539 acres of cotton this year, which is about a 30 percent decrease compared to last year. Three years ago growers planted 20,000 acres of cotton in the county, Harrell said. "There are a couple of reasons we are seeing the shift," he said. "One is the high input costs of growing cotton. It takes a lot of money to grow a cotton crop. Second, the commodity prices are now a little more favorable for corn and soybeans. So that has pulled some of the acreage out of the cotton crop." The price of cotton on the futures exchange for December is 47 cents per pound. But growers would actually get about 43 cents per pound because a delivery cost is deducted from the price, Harrell said. Shirley Gibson, manager of Silver Lake Growers Cotton Gin, said the ginning season got off to a late start because some farmers were just finishing their tobacco harvest. But this week the cotton started rolling in, and a double shift was added at the gin, she said. Some growers didn't start picking until the first of this week," she said. "I've got some reports (from cotton growers) that the crop is better than what they thought it would be. Some say there is not much to it. We have a late season, but it should be a short season because there is not much cotton acreage out there." The falling price of cotton and high cost of planting it have caused most farmers to cut down on planting, Gibson said. "If the prices don't increase, there's not going to be any (cotton) planting next year or very little cotton," she said. With the cost to grow cotton at about 75 cents to 80 cents per pound for input costs, it didn't add up with the December futures at 65 cents per pound, she said. "It is not a pretty picture," Gibson said. "And I don't see the input costs coming down next year. So that means the price of cotton has to go up." eddie@wilsontimes.com | 265-7820 |
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