Shrinking cotton

Every fall, land throughout extreme Southeast Missouri becomes white as the cotton bolls start to become visible, creating vistas no other crop can duplicate.

From just north of Sikeston, west toward Poplar Bluff, east to the Mississippi River and all the way south to the Arkansas border, cotton is big, as it has been for decades. The crop isn't grown anywhere else in the state. Only Dunklin, Pemiscot, Scott, New Madrid and Stoddard counties support a cotton crop -- 500,000 acres in 2006.

This year, those cotton bolls will still poke out their white heads across the Bootheel, but there will be fewer of them. More farmers have opted to plant less cotton -- 20 percent less, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- in favor of corn and soybeans, crops that looked more profitable at the beginning of the growing season.

Jeff Hux analyzed cotton fibers at the family farm last month.

"As far as net return, you make more money as the market is today with corn and beans than cotton," said John Hux Jr., a Sikeston-area cotton producer and member of the Missouri Cotton Growers' Organization Board of Directors.

Throughout the American southern cotton-growing region, the story is the same -- reduction in acreage in favor of more lucrative commodities like corn and soybeans. In Texas, where cotton is king, 1.4 million fewer acres were planted this spring. In Louisiana, 295,000 fewer acres were planted, and the story is the same in other cotton-growing states.

A push toward ethanol along with other market forces have raised the once-depressed corn prices, even though those prices have fallen sharply from the beginning of the season, from about $4 per bushel to a little more than $3 per bushel today. In response to those higher prices, many farmers changed several of their acres from cotton to corn or soybeans.

"On paper there was just no reason to grow cotton," said Tom Jennings, another Sikeston-area cotton farmer.

Jennings reduced his cotton crop this year by more than half, from 800 acres to 370 acres. But as the growing season continues, Jennings said that early spring logic is starting to fall apart. Cotton prices have started to rise -- about 10 cents per pound since spring, Jennings said -- coinciding with the dramatic drop in corn prices.

In contrast to cotton, corn acreage across the state has increased from an estimated 2.7 million acres to 3.5 million, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, part of the USDA.

In reality, this year's drop in acreage might not be as dramatic as it seems at first glance, said Roger Ott, an agricultural statistician for the National Agricultural Statistics Service's Missouri field office. While the 20 percent decrease is "significant," what it doesn't show is the upward trend in cotton production in the last few years. From about 400,000 acres in 2000 -- equal to the estimates for the current year -- Missouri's cotton acreage jumped to 500,000 last year, thanks in part to improving yields from the state's boll weevil eradication program. Now the acreage is coming back down.

Mike Geske, president of the Missouri Corn Growers Association, admits corn and the prices farmers were seeing during the spring are largely responsible for the reduction in cotton acreage, and he expects another big crop next year. But he said corn won't threaten the existence of other crops in the area.

Farmers worry about cotton's future due to the export of the country's textile industry to cheaper labor markets overseas, primarily in Asia, Geske said. If cotton's future is bleak, then corn could serve as an alternative for farmers who might be left in financial trouble if they rely on cotton.

"I think it's good that corn can pick up some of those acres and give those farmers an alternative crop," Geske said.

Hux said in the end the 2007 growing season might actually work in cotton farmers' favor.

"I'm a cotton man and I hate to say this, but it's more favorable to raise beans and corn than it is cotton," Hux said. "However, we feel like in two years we'll have a good cotton market again. The decrease in acreage might be a blessing in disguise."

For some, the blessing might be difficult to see right now. In places like Louisiana, some cotton gins are reporting they might not operate this fall due to the shortage in cotton.

Southeast Missouri gins probably won't be affected as harshly. At the Stoddard County Cotton Co. gin in Bernie, superintendent Bill Hutchcraft said acreage is down, but the gin will still be open for business during the harvest.

"It will just be a little shorter work season," Hutchcraft said. The plant processes cotton primarily grown by its owners and farmers who lease land from them -- a common practice in the gin business. One grower shifted about 1,500 acres from cotton to corn, Hutchcraft said.

But good prices for cottonseed, a product of the gin process, and possibly the best yields in history, will help offset the reduction in acreage, he said.

According to the latest reports, 49 percent of the cotton crop is rated in "good" condition and 29 percent "fair," according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

And Hux said that even though the state's cotton acreage has seen a large drop this year from last, the cotton farming tradition in the Bootheel isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Some area farmland is suitable only for cotton, a crop that requires excellent surface water drainage, Hux said.

"We'll have cotton in this area from now on," he said.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 18