Rains wreak havoc on Central Texas cotton

By JULIET BRISKIN | Central Texas Edition

September 13, 2001 -- While the recent rains were a welcome sight for most Central Texans the showers could not have come at a worse time for area cotton producers. Just as farmers were preparing to strip the cotton the rains came and wreaked havoc upon this year's crop.

Leroy Walters, a cotton producer from Bynum, farms a little over 3,000 acres of cotton in three locations throughout Hill County. Walters' sons Aaron and Eric, farm with him and they have one full-time and one part-time employee.

Normally this time of year they would be spraying in the morning and stripping the cotton after the moisture evaporated. Right now they are approximately seven days behind on harvesting the cotton.

This delay puts them behind on running over the fields to prepare for milo, corn and wheat planting. "This squeezes everything into a tighter time period," said Walters. "Of course once we start drilling wheat the moisture will be nice. If we could have gotten this rain the third week of September most of the cotton would have been out. But its all part of the ball game."

According to him the cotton was extremely loose in the burr due to the dry summer. "With the large amount of rain, the weight of the water-logged cotton and the wind has just pulled the cotton out and dropped it on the ground," he said.

Some of his fields were more damaged than others but according to Walters the largest losses he is faced with come from shrinkage of the cotton. "Originally I estimated I had lost about 50 lint pounds (per acre)," he said, "but after looking at the cotton yesterday it may be as much as 100 lint pounds."

"Cotton prices are low right now," stated Walters, "and even with the loan deficiency payment (LDP) we are looking at 50-55 cent cotton."

When cotton drops below loan level the government covers the difference between the world price of cotton and the loan level with the LDP. According to Walters the LDP is going to be about half of his operations' payment this year.

"Another loss that we are going to have this year," said Walters, "is cotton with light spots. Naturally the best grade of cotton is white grade with different staple lengths, but I don't see us pulling whites anymore even if it does bleach out a bit with the sun. That's going to be of lesser value."

Walters grows picker cotton and "one thing about picker cotton is that it is very good about bleaching out with the sun," he said. "Much better than the old stripper varieties." Even with the bleaching quality of his picker cotton Walters still feels he is going to be pulling light spot grades.

In addition to the light spots and the cotton that has dropped, the rain has caused the cotton seed to germinate. "I don't know what that is going to do at the mills," he said. "I don't know if they are going to discount that or not."

But with the seeds sprouting in the cotton Walters can no longer use it to plant. "What this does for me is the seed that I would catch to plant in addition to certified and technical seed is lost," he said.

Currently he has some cotton at a delinter plant that is going to run a fatty acid test. This test will confirm if the seed is good enough to catch. "I don't have any hopes of the cotton passing," he stated. "Over at Brandon where we have some of our cotton we are in a Delta Pine seed plot. I don't think they are going to accept any of our seed and they were going to pay us a premium for it. We are going to loose money that way as well."

One way the untimely rain could be a benefit to the industry is the data gathered from the numerous test plots in the area. "In a way you are going to get some good readings as far as bad weather goes," said Walters. "On the other hand, in my test plots we are looking for lint quality so we are not going to get very good readings on that."

Walters has spoken to farmers south of Waco and according to him they have been hurt the worst by the untimely rains. "I've heard they have water standing around in the cotton and I don't see how they have anything left," he said. "Cotton can take a lot of weather, but everything has its limits."