Low prices, weather extremes make for a disappointing cotton season

Posted 12:19PM on Saturday 2nd November 2002 ( 22 years ago )

LEESBURG - Ginner Amner Chicas sits at a console dotted with colored lights, watching cascades of cotton tumbling through the fronts of four huge machines that spin and roar 24 hours a day during the peak of the Southern cotton harvest. Standing as tall and as wide as city buses, the machines are known as gin stands. Peach-colored and trimmed in brushed aluminum, they're the heart of the King Cotton Gin, north of Albany in southwestern Georgia. Gin stands separate the seeds from the white cotton lint that has become the world's best-selling fiber. On good days, Amner sees mostly red and green lights. But when something goes wrong with the belts, bearings and motors that keep the machines spinning, some of the lights flicker out. That means trouble. He has to get the problems fixed quickly because trucks arrive constantly with more cotton from the fields. He also has to make sure there's a steady flow to a machine at the other end of the plant that presses the cotton into 480-pound bales. U.S. cotton farmers have also seen their share of trouble for the past few years, but their problems will take more than a squirt of oil to correct. Hounded by low prices and weather extremes, they have suffered huge losses for at least two years and, in the Southeast, have experienced frustrating delays in harvesting the current crop. U.S. growers are expected to harvest 18.1 million bales this year, 11 percent less than last year's record crop, across the cotton belt, which stretches from Virginia to California. With an extended drought in the Southeast, many fields were too dry during the growing season. Then farmers were hit by cloudy conditions and excessive rain. Tropical Storm Isidore and Hurricane Lili compounded the problems when they struck Gulf Coast in late September and early October. The storms deluged the crop in Louisiana and Mississippi and to a lesser extent, Arkansas. Then Tropical Storm Kyle, packing 8 inches of rain, sideswiped the South Carolina coast. As a result, much of the crop is rated poor to very poor in the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia and Alabama. For weeks the fields have been too wet to support cotton pickers and other heavy equipment, and the longer the cotton sits in the field, the more it deteriorates. Cotton grades are based on color, fiber length, fiber strength and other qualities that can be marred by moisture. In Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, harvesting is more than two weeks behind the five-year average. ``The first storm gave us quite a bit of rain and some damage, but it was survivable,'' said Will McCarty, a Mississippi State University cotton specialist. ``It set the crop up for damage from the second storm. ``Since those storms, we've gotten showers and very poor drying conditions,'' he said. ``We've lost yield because of the cotton being knocked from the stalk on the ground. We've lost weight ... and we've lost quality. When you add all that altogether, it's a pretty significant loss.'' Still, McCarty doesn't expect Mississippi's losses to have much affect on prices. Cotton prices have tumbled over the last few years because of U.S. textile mill closings, last year's huge crop and uncertainty about China's commitment to buy U.S. cotton. As the world's largest producer and consumer, China is a heavyweight in the world cotton arena. ``I think we're looking at probably another year of continuing to see pressure on prices,'' said Gary Adams, chief economist for the National Cotton Council in Memphis, Tenn. ``They've improved a bit from where we were a year ago, but from a historical perspective they're still pretty low. It's the lowest we've seen since the early '70s.'' Georgia farmers expect to harvest 1.4 million acres, with average yields of 621 pounds per acre, 53 pounds less than the national average of 674 pounds per acre. An excellent yield would be 960 pounds, or two bales, per acre. Philip Jost, a University of Georgia cotton agronomist in Statesboro, said some farmers in southeastern Georgia are mowing down their cotton and will try to recoup some of their losses from crop insurance. Grower Richey Seaton, executive director of the Georgia Cotton Commission, said prices and weather have made it a difficult year for farmers. ``We didn't receive the timely rainfall when the cotton needed it, and unfortunately we've had a lot of rain and limited sunny days from late September on,'' he said. ``With the rains, we probably have one of our worst harvest seasons in many growers' recollections.'' Mike Jeschke, King Cotton's manager, said the cotton trucked to his gin from the irrigated fields around Albany and Leesburg is about average, but the cotton from non-irrigated fields is below. ``If cotton gets the moisture it needs at the right time, dry land can make two bales to the acre,'' said Jeschke, 55. ``But this year, with no rain in the summer, a lot of dry land didn't even make a bale.'' The din of machinery makes conversation nearly impossible in the gin, a metal building about the size of three football fields. King Cotton will gin about 20,000 bales between mid-September and December. During the season, Jeschke often works 12 or more hours a day, but he's used to it. He began his career in San Angelo, Tex., in the 1950s, working in his father's gin. Tending machines, coordinating his crews and keeping track of the tons of cotton that pass through are a normal part of his life. ``It's one of those things that gets in your blood,'' he said. ``I don't think I could stand cotton season without being in a gin.''

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