Heavy rain from Hurricane Harvey is causing problems for cotton producers, hitting Texas at a time when many farmers are storing excess supplies on fields following a bumper harvest.
The cotton that was not swept away by the storm may have suffered damage or be too wet to gin.
Once in a decade crop… that is what farmers are calling this cotton season, which means it was a great cotton season.
Other cotton farmers were not so lucky.
This far south on the coast most of the cotton was already harvested before the storm. But now we are now losing a lot of that cotton after hurricane Harvey ripped through the lower Coastal Bend.
“The storm hit and a lot of these modules were sitting in the field or on gin yards so the quality is going down, and we are physically losing cotton, the seed is sprouting, and that causes a lot of problems," said Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Agronomist Josh Mcginty.
Further up the coast, most of the cotton crop had not been harvested prior to Harvey and is undergoing the same losses and weathering in the field.
“Every one of these modules you look at is potentially thousands of dollars. And they get paid not only on the number of pounds of cotton they deliver, but also the quality of cotton, and we are losing both right now. It’s going to take so long to recover from this. The cotton crop was going to be the profitable crop this year, and that may not be the case after this storm in a lot of areas. So we are going to feel this for awhile,” said Mcginty.
David Wyatt Farmer and Manager of the Bayside Richardson CO-OP gin off FM 1360 in Woodsboro, Texas thatΆs been around since 1941, says their cotton gin suffered major damage, and more than 30 thousand cotton storage modules were also damaged.
“We are looking at 800 to a million dollar loss of revenue. We have insurance, but we donΆt know if it is enough to cover it all. I am estimating that we will have somewhere around 4-5 million dollars worth of damage to the cotton and maybe higher than that. It will be devastating,” said Richardson CO-OP manager David Wyatt.
Many cotton farmers went from having their best cotton season to their worst cotton season. We are going to feel this for awhile.
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