HARVESTING HEARTACHE: LOCAL COTTON FARMERS GOING BROKE

VANDUSER, Mo. -- Cotton farmers B.T. Johnson and his son, Tony, pause in their barn outside Vanduser. Dressed in insulated coveralls over collared shirts, the father and son are tired.Unless this bad spell of being unable to retain hired hands lifts, they must bring in the 1,400-acre harvest themselves. They have 23 acres done.

"The Missouri cotton farmer is going broke. If something doesn't happen, we're all going broke," says B.T.

"Sometimes, it makes you want to kick a wall," says Tony, in old prescription sunglasses. "But then the sun comes out and you think, 'Guess I'll go out in the field again.'"

Around them, the two-story barn is like a museum of antique farm equipment.

This time of year, Vanduser, located west of U.S. Highway 61 in Scott County, is all about cotton. The dirty white fluff of seed cotton lies like snow on the plants in unharvested fields. It is compressed into 20,000-pound, rectangular modules in harvested fields. It is scattered loose over the pavement of the Skelly gas station at the intersection of routes DD and Z.

The Johnsons have worked hard to bring their crop to maturity. They have sprayed pre-emergence fertilizer. They have sprayed post-emergence fertilizer. They have sprayed for weeds. They have sprayed for boll weevils four times, for plant bugs once, for thrips twice, and for aphids once.

"If there's a bug out there, it wants to eat cotton," says Tony.

Every chemical they spray increases their cost per acre, slowly narrowing their profit margin, slowly increasing the stomach acid and migraine headaches as the pressure builds to find a good price at market time.

Higher production

The latest wisdom predicts that cotton production in Missouri will be nearly a quarter higher than it was last year.

According to a report released this month by the Missouri Agricultural Statistics Service in Columbia, Mo., this year's Bootheel cotton production is forecast at 580,000 bales -- 23 percent above the 1999 production. This year's projected yield, 696 pounds, is up 95 pounds from last year.

Dave Emslie, crops statistician with the Missouri Agricultural Statistics Service, classified this year's production as "a little better than average, but not great by any means."

"Generally, price moves inversely to production," he said. "The general price level of cotton over the country is low, and government support programs cause a fairly sizable subsidy to be paid to farmers.

"I would say probably the cotton farmers are in the same economic shape as other farmers, which is pretty tight."

B.T. Johnson said he expects the government's loan deficiency payment program will inflate the price he will receive for this year's harvest to almost the cost of production. Almost.

This year, cotton farmers can receive a government subsidy of 7.33 cents per pound, based on their production history of about the last three years, said the National Cotton Council in Memphis, Tenn. Also, farmers can take out subsidized loans using their harvest as collateral, receiving 51.92 cents per pound, but repayment would be calculated as if the loans were for 47 cents per pound.

Current New York futures predictions say this year's harvest will go for 62 cents per pound, but farmers will receive 5 to 7 cents less than this.

'The farmer is dying'

Living partially off government subsidies is not a source of pride for B.T. Johnson, who reported he has been working 13-hour days this harvest season.

"Bill Clinton is out there talking about how prosperous the country is. But the farmer is dying," said B.T. "Every farmer I know gambles everything he has on next year's crop."

So why not get into a new line of work?

It took decades to build up the equity they have, said the Johnsons, and selling it would mean they'd net half of its value once the IRS takes its cut.

Times are better at the Vanduser Cotton Gin, which is managed by Jim Johnson, B.T.'s cousin.

Cotton gins refine seed cotton, removing the dirt particles, or "trash" -- turning the white fluff into lint cotton for its trip to the mill. The gin takes the cotton seed as payment, and turns this into a profit by selling the white-fuzzed pods to cattle feed and cooking oil manufacturers.

For every 1,400 pounds of seed cotton that is fed to the gin, 750 pounds of seeds are collected, 500 pounds of lint cotton is produced for the farmer, and 150 pounds of trash is produced for the landfill.

For cotton farmers, said Johnson, "It's pretty tight. The government is doing a reasonable job keeping them afloat, but the markets are tight. The cotton farmer couldn't exist without government assistance."

Emslie said the main problem for cotton farmers is surplus production.

"World trade has become extremely competitive," said Emslie. "We're no longer able to dominate the world market. We've got so much competition from the other countries who want to export.

"China is about the same size as we are in the production of cotton. India is probably the second biggest."

The United States exports six to nine million bales of cotton annually.

It's a problem that the chemical companies sell the necessary crop chemicals to foreign farmers at a reduced rate, said B.T. Johnson. American cotton farmers pay more for the same chemicals, he said.

The module system

A cotton truck arrived at the Vanduser Cotton Gin and unloaded a module of harvested cotton. Belt-chains in the truck bed were synchronized to the speed that the vehicle crept off the loading bay so the truck pulled out from under the loosely-packed module without scattering it.

The module system -- which has grown in popularity over the last decade -- has made the harvesting process more efficient, said Jim Johnson. The farmer harvests the crop with a cotton-picker and presses the cotton into 20,000-pound modules with a module-builder. A tarp is tied over the modules and they are left in the field until the truck comes to transport them to the gin.

"People were doubtful you could leave cotton out there with a little tarp over it," the gin manager explained. "But it actually improves the cotton after five to six days."

The ever-growing popularity of the module system has created yet another expense for the cotton farmer -- a $25,000 module-builder. Failing to acquire such a machine is a death-knell for the small farmer, Jim Johnson said.

Cousin B.T. Johnson is hoping to buy one of the presses eventually.

"Most people have got module-builders," B.T. said, looking at the rolling crop fields. "We can't afford that yet."

In the meantime, he and Tony have 1,377 acres to harvest.