Industry representatives cheered the announcement, which comes as cotton growers beholden to $700,000 cotton planters and last-chance financing for seed, fertilizer and pesticides are betting on double-bale crops just to break even.

“Our producers appreciate Secretary VilsackΆs efforts in providing marketing assistance to a commodity that is suffering a serious decline in market revenue partly due to heavily subsidized foreign competition, with no signs of commodity prices reaching the level needed to offset their production costs,” said Shane Stephens, a Mississippi cotton warehouse operator who is chairman of the Tennessee-based National Cotton Council.

Steve Verett of Lubbock-based Plains Cotton Growers said the short-term assistance will provide some “well-needed relief.”

“We had hoped for more, but weΆre certainly appreciative of the USDA doing this,” he said.

Cotton has been selling for 64 cents per pound, compared with highs of about $2 per pound in 2011. Growers say the market is skewed thanks to high payouts to farmers overseas by foreign governments such as China, which has paid cotton farmers as much as $1.45 per pound.

Before the 2014 farm bill, federal crop payments would have kicked in once the base price fell below 72 cents per pound.

Direct payments to cotton farmers were phased out beginning in 2014 under the farm bill to resolve a World Trade Organization dispute with Brazil, which contended that the United States was unfairly shoring up the U.S. cotton price. Cotton was excluded from replacement support deals such as agriculture risk coverage and price loss coverage programs beginning this year, but it still was eligible for marketing assistance loans and crop insurance coverage.

The industry earlier this year thought it had a solution. Cotton is processed as both fiber and oil. By reclassifying cotton as an oilseed, as had been done with soybeans in the 2002 farm bill, cotton could again be designated a program crop eligible for the safety net.

House Agriculture Committee chairman Mike Conaway, R-Midland, joined more than 100 representatives in formally requesting Vilsack to make that designation.

But Vilsack said he lacked the legal authority. Critics of the request said such a redesignation would cost taxpayers $10 billion in payments.

Neugebauer, whose district in Lubbock sits in the heart of the nationΆs largest cotton patch, praised MondayΆs announcement.

“I am pleased to see the department put some assistance in place,” he said. “This is not producersΆ first choice for how USDA could have addressed the downturn in cotton, and I agree that more could have been done by designating cotton as an eligible oilseed.”

Jeff Nunley, executive director of the South Texas Cotton and Grain Association, said the industry hadnΆt given up on the oilseed designation but that the cost-sharing announcement was welcome news.

“IΆve had a couple of producers call me and theyΆre like, well, I donΆt know if this is going to be enough to really get us out of the trouble weΆre in, but itΆs hard to complain Άcause itΆs better than a sharp stick in the eye.”

Matt Huie, a cotton grower in Beeville, said the one-time payment was a needed boost, but far from a solution.

“If you want a quote from me, itΆs going to be ‘mejor que nadaΆ (better than nothing),” he said.

“We still have the potential out there to make a really big crop, but the short version is that at todayΆs prices, it takes a really good crop just to break even,” he said. “Although the secretaryΆs designation here helps, thatΆs based on the 2015 crop, and thereΆs still nothing in place for the 2016 crop, which is what we are currently growing. And the risks are pretty huge.”