Lack of cotton-pickin' rain felt by more than just farmers

Ronald W. Erdrich
Abilene Reporter-News

We’ll always take the rain. But for cotton farmers, it has been too little too late.

If they got any at all.

“There’s really little to no cotton to even speak of here in our Abilene area or Big Country area,” said Steve Estes, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension agent for Taylor County.

A lone cotton plant grows in an otherwise nearly-empty field south of Stamford last week. The lack of rainfall in the spring, combined with brutal high temperatures, has made the Big Country cotton crop nearly non-existent for the year.

“A few irrigated fields, but not much in the way of dryland cotton. It was so dry back during planting time, it didn't really come up.”

When the year started, the only folks anticipating lack of rainfall in 2022 were National Weather Service climatologists hinting at a La Nina year. The rest of us heard those warnings, put our heads down, then hoped for the best.

But as spring seemed to wave from a distance as it passed us by, which invited summer to arrive early and overstay its welcome, folks came to accept the inevitable. The rain wasn’t coming but the heat and dryness for sure were here to stay.

Currently, Abilene has received 4.98 inches of precipitation this year, now more than 10.5 inches under the norm.

San Angelo, 90 miles to the south, has received 3.55 inches - 8.8 inches under its averag.

What came up, burned-up

Mid-September is when I usually start thinking about doing a cotton story. By that time, usually the crop’s flowers start turning to bolls and an idea of the season’s yield begins to take shape.

This year? Not so much. What little did come up, is burned up. Brutal temperatures in May that felt more like July or August sucked the moisture right out of the soil.

Still, seed had to be planted, if only to meet the crop insurance deadline June 20. If the cotton crop doesn’t take over the summer, at least a farm family can recover some of their expense, stay afloat, and prepare for the next year’s season.

“Cotton takes so many days to go all the way from a seedling to a mature plant ready to harvest,” Estes explained. “You go much later than that, then you're up against frost or freeze in the fall and it not being ready.

A cotton flower blooms on a small plant in Jones County Wednesday. Many Big Country plants that have managed to come up are either in irrigated fields or are expected to be too small to bring in an adequate crop at harvest time.

“So, June 20 is kind of a good deadline that the insurance sets for our area to ensure that the cotton will make it to a crop before frost or freeze.”

If it’s a particularly wet spring and farmers can’t get into the fields, or some other issue delays the sowing, they can usually get a bit of slack cut their way.

“But ideally, rule-of-thumb we've always used in the ag world around here is, if cotton's not planted by July 5, then it'll never make it in time before the first frost,” Estes said.

Deja Vu all over again

But just like everything in the environment is connected, the cotton industry ecosystem functions the same way. Though farmers have a safety net through their crop insurance, the same can’t be said for those also depending on that crop – namely cotton gins.

“Our local cotton gins are the ones that are really gonna suffer,” Estes said. “Remember back in 2011? Same scenario, there was no cotton really to speak of in this area, because it was just so hot and dry it didn't come up.”

Big Country gins basically had to go an entire year with little to no income.

“The gin has to make money off of ginning cotton; if they didn't have any cotton to gin, then they couldn’t even open and run,” Estes recalled. “A lot of them really struggled trying to not lay off employees.”

Rain falls behind Stamford as a rare (for this summer) storm pops up Wednesday. While rains are good for pastures and might help with some hay crops, the precipitation is too little too late for saving the region's cotton crop.

When asked if there was the possibility of relief from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture or some other government agency, Estes was doubtful.

“Not really for the gins, that's the bad thing. I mean, there's relief, different programs for actual farmers and producers,” he said. “But the gins themselves, there's not.”

No relief in sight

Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema succeeded in adding $4 billion in drought relief benefitting Western states along the Colorado River in the Inflation Reduction Act scheduled to be signed by President Biden this week. But none of that will bring relief to agricultural businesses like Texas cotton gins whose only hope may reside in a disaster declaration, if it were to come.

Until then, we’re on our own.

A westbound jetliner passes over Haskell on Feb. 11. Clear blue skies were all too common from late winter, most of spring, and most of summer. With them has come drought and the prayers of many wishing for relief.

“My mother-in-law works for a gin in Rotan, and I remember back in 2011 they did everything they could to keep employees, to where they didn't lose them,” Estes said. “They did a lot of creative things with the city and the community to find jobs for their employees and keep them a steady paycheck coming in to ride out the drought and get by until the next year.”

A decade later, it looks like it’s time for those creative ideas to make their return. Estes said the fear is that without action, those employees might find other employment or worse, move away.

“In a small town like Rotan, when families pick up and move away, they don't come back.”

Ronald Erdrich is the photojournalist and a columnist for the Abilene Reporter-News. If you appreciate locally driven news, you can support local journalists with a digital subscription to ReporterNews.com.