I’m overdue to write up something explaining what’s going on in the world of US 2013 cotton acres. Of course, it has been the topic of discussion for a lot of cotton meetings this winter and the spring planting season was bumpy with weather. I figured now is as good a time as any to talk about what’s going on.

Winter Cotton Planting Projections for 2013

The winter meetings showed a range of projected acres from the USDA’s  projected 2013 U.S. cotton planted acreage of 10.0 million acres (down almost one-fifth from 2012). They said it was “due mainly to lower cotton prices and relative net returns that favor shifts to alternative crops.” The National Cotton Council’s (NCC’s) planting survey (taken in December-January) provided a lower number forecasting 9.0 million acres before prices rose a bit. The survey pointed to a movement from cotton to corn and soybeans in the Delta and the Southeast and wheat, corn and sorghum as the main replacement of cotton in the Southwest, and wheat and specialty crops taking acres from my favorite fiber in the West.

Spring Cotton Planting Results 2013

The USDA NASS issued it’s 2013 acreage report on July 28. And thankfully the USDA was closer and cotton acres didn’t drop as much as farmers had thought they may as the total came in at 10.251 million acres. That’s probably due in part to the fact that cotton prices rose a bit and spring weather in some areas made it hard to get earlier crops in the ground but it still represents a big drop from 2012.

The chart below shows which states had the largest drops.

* all numbers in thousands

I had to add the change column to see where the drops were. Then I realized I wanted to know on a percentage basis where the changes were most significant. Surprisingly, Florida and Georgia were the only cotton-producing states that had increases in planted areas with 16 percent and 1 percent increases respectively. The states with the largest percentage drops were Oklahoma (down 51%), Kansas (down 46%), Arkansas  (down 46%), Louisiana (down 43%) and both Mississippi and Tennessee cutting their acreage by a third (33% and 32% respectively). Now the watch is on to see how these acres do through the summer. Hail storms sometimes make farmers abandon acres as can drought.

Here’s hoping to a successful year for the country’s cotton farmers! I’m hoping to continue to lose weight so I will be in the market for some more jeans!

Related articles

• USDA revises 2013 cotton acreage estimate
• Cotton growers persist amid drought, storms
• USDA Acreage Report
• Farmers are Planning For Cotton Harvest as They Plant Cotton

The post 2013 Cotton Acres Early Projections & Planting Estimates appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

This fall, while in Kansas for the State of Now, I took the backroads from Hutchison toward the part of northwestern Oklahoma I called home for four years while I was in college. When I was driving through an “s” curve, I saw this sign and had to stop — yes, the cotton logo had demanded my attention! I thought I’d quickly snap a photo or two and get back on the road, but then a loaded truck came by and I realized the cotton gin was incredibly close. Just felt like I had to stop! Here are the photos I snapped and some of the things I saw that afternoon.

Driving down the road, I saw this sign & had to stop — Southern Kansas Cotton Growers Cooperative

A module truck drove by as I took the photo of the coop’s sign… I knew the gin had to be close by so I followed it! I went into the office while the driver had the module weighed in.

Self-portrait (that’s me Janice Person) at a cotton cooperative, modules in the background. It was a really windy day!

a cotton module (tightly compacted seed cotton straight from the field) enters the gin, and first step is it is pulled apart

These are the gin stands — the equipment that will separate cotton lint from cotton seeds

Closeup of the part of the gin stand that separates lint from seed — those are really small saws that pull the lint through

Cotton gin control panel

This is the bale press — the piece of equipment that compacts cotton lint into a bale for storage & transport for use in textiles

The gin’s mechanic was working on equipment and was nice enough to stop and visit for a few minutes. The coop has two gins that they alternated running this season. He keeps things in good mechanical order. Months later, I mentioned meeting him and found out that he has sent his kids to some of the most elite universities in the US based on his hard work in the cotton industry. Love that!

cotton bales ready for shipping

every bale of cotton in the US gets a permanent bale tag that stays with it from gin to fabric

Cottonseed, gin trash, etc are placed outside the gin until its sold by the truck load.

Related articles

• Eli Whitney would have been proud! – Eloy, AZ
• 2012 cotton crop remembered as record-breaking, heart-breaking
• The 12 Days of Cotton – My Christmas Homage to My Favorite Natural Fiber

The post Cotton Gin in Kansas Made Me Pump My Brakes appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Today a friend of mine has a post on the company blog that, with the exception of growing up in Texas and the whole mom thing, feels like I could have written it. Like Molly, I have friends or people I meet when I’m out and about, show some sense of surprise when the conversation turns to where we all work. When I say I work in agriculture that’s usually surprising but it goes up a notch when I explain I work for Monsanto (reminder as the footer says, this is my personal blog).  Sometimes people want to dismiss it as “everyone needs a paycheck” and I have to explain that’s not it. I have a lot of choices. Other times people want to help me see the error of my ways. I usually explain that I choose to work here because I am a true believer in agriculture. I want to make a difference.

Molly does a great job capturing my thoughts as she speaks for herself. The blog post reads:

This is a question I hear again and again from new friends, surprised to hear that I work for Monsanto.  Their surprise is certainly understandable.  I don’t exactly fit the stereotype.  I’m politically progressive, I shop at my local natural food store and the local farmers’ markets, and I belong to natural parenting and attachment parenting mommy groups.  I’ve got my own little organic garden growing in pots out on my back porch.  I even cloth diaper my baby.

So why on earth would I find myself working at a place like Monsanto?  Everyone who’s ever read anything on the internet knows what they say about Big Bad Monsanto.  So why does someone like me, a liberal, political activist, lactivist, environmentalist, marginal locavore, and attachment parenting advocate work for a company like that?

Here’s what I tell my friends:

I didn’t fall into a job and Monsanto.  It wasn’t something that just happened.  I actively sought a position with the company.  I wanted to work here, because I believe the work we are doing has a positive impact on the environment and the world.

I’ll use cotton as an example.  I grew up in the Brazos River Valley in Texas, and cotton is something I know a little about.  My family used to go every year to a local cotton gin festival. We took tours of the cotton gins. I learned about pickers, strippers, modules, and bales in 4H.  And it was always fun to pick up the leftover fluff at the side of the road to play with, pick the seeds out, and comb it until it was soft enough to go into a doll bed.

(continued at You work where? | Beyond the Rows)

I am passionate about agriculture. I love working with farmers and especially enjoy knowing I’m making a positive difference. And I’ve worked for a few companies and made a conscious choice to join Monsanto. I talk to farmers almost daily — whether they use biotech or choose not to, heck, some of my friends are organic farmers, and I really think that we are all better by sharing information freely. With only two percent of America involved in agriculture, we have to look at how all of us can do better to meet the challenges ahead. And in case anyone is interested, agriculture of all sorts is always taking applications! I’d love to see more folks joining our ranks! At Monsanto, on the farm or wherever!

What are things that people are surprised to hear about you?

Related articles

• Meal Six: At Monsanto, I Learned I Am the Problem
• Why would a farmer plant GMO cotton?
• Cotton Is Life in Texas – Cotton Farmers Tell Their Story
• What our fields actually need is a heavy application of honesty

The post Idealistic about the Future of Farming & Working at Monsanto appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

The post Cotton Plant 101: What do a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like? VIDEO appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

My friend David Hayden asked me today whether I had a top 10 list of cotton states. He tweeted:

@JPlovesCOTTON do you have a blog post with the top ten #cotton producing states or know where I can find such a list?

— David Hayden (@Davidhayden7) August 26, 2012

I didn’t have a top 10 post and as I sat down to research and write it, I began pondering how in the world I could work that out. I am sure that this sounds like a super easy question to lots of people but I had several ways to think about a top 10 so rather than do one, I am going to do a few of them. You can see some of the options in the text of the latest USDA Crop Production Report’s national numbers for 2012 (for 2014 cotton production, please see this post):

All cotton production is forecast at 17.7 million 480-pound bales, up 13 percent from last year. Yield is expected to average 784 pounds per harvested acre, down 6 pounds from last year. Upland cotton production is forecast at 17.0 million 480-pound bales, up 15 percent from 2011. Pima cotton production, forecast at 663,000 bales, is down 22 percent from last year. Producers expect to harvest 10.8 million acres ofall cotton, up 14 percent from 2011. This harvested total includes 10.6 million acres of Upland cotton and 233,400 acres of Pima cotton.

Top 10 Cotton States in Acreage / Area to Harvest in 2012

This year, farmers in the US had some reductions in cotton acres as more farmers in the Cotton Belt looked to make money planting a corn crop. That seems to have worked well for quite a few of them too. There were more than 10.8 million acres planted to my favorite fiber though with almost half of those acres in Texas! Georgia was another big area for cotton planting and we will see whether or not Hurricane Isaac has any impact on the anticipated 1.2 million acres to be harvested there. (All numbers listed in thousands.) 

1. Texas                   5,215.5
2. Georgia               1,245
3. Arkansas             570
4. Mississippi          570
5. North Carolina   545
6. Alabama              387
7. Tennessee          375
8. California            363
9. Missouri              355
10. South Carolina   278

Top 10 Cotton States in Production / Total Number of Bales in 2012

With the incredible number of acres Texas has, it is probably no surprise that the Lone Star state takes the lead in the number of cotton bales produced! In fact, many of the top 10 states in terms of acreage do well in showing up production-wise. Note: cotton bales weigh an average of 480 pounds each and can make a lot of awesome textiles!

1. Texas                   6,725
2. Georgia               2,400
3. Arkansas             1,200
4. California            1,145
5. Mississippi          1,100
6. North Carolina   950
7. Missouri              675
8. Arizona                658
9. Tennessee          590
10. Alabama              580

Top 10 Cotton States Per Acre Production / Yield in Pounds Per Acre in 2012

You can see from this year’s numbers as well as the averages over time that areas of the Cotton Belt where weather was good for production really excelled compared to the traditional deep South areas where drought was a problem in 2012. Arizona and California tend to produce high pounds per acre whereas some of the other areas can tend to be a bit more variable.

The post Top 10 Cotton States in Area, Production, Yield & Value appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Have you seen signs like this as you’ve driven around the backroads or interstates and wondered why a farmer would post a sign like this on his cotton, corn or soybean farm? I probably did at one time, but I’ve been in agriculture so long, that I just think of it as standard operating procedure. I’ve thought about answering this question for a while, but keep getting sidetracked. The question seemed to have been answered in what people thought was a logical way, but in fact it was a misunderstanding. The question came back up recently as I read this story about some new farm signs.

I never would have thought about any of this if the people at Illinois Farm Families hadn’t done some research about why so many people think that America’s farms are by and large, corporate farms. That’s a big misperception when in reality, 94 percent of Illinois farms are family farms. One of the major reasons they thought the farms they saw were corporate-owned? They saw signs with some logos on them along the edges of various farms.

While I can see how people may make that connection, it’s a little like saying Ralph Lauren owns my butt cause I wear Ralph Lauren Chaps jeans. And since clothes seems to be an analogy we all can relate to, I’ll keep it going through the post. Besides, I have already picked a cotton based product and you all know I love cotton!

So why don’t we look at the things that I can tell you about signs, and I hope if I don’t answer your questions, you will ask them if you have any.

What do the signs mean?

There are a few kinds of signs actually.  I’ve seen signs for seed varieties and crop protection products. There are various farmer organizations that put up signs for members and I really enjoy the ones that Delta FARM put up as farmers do a voluntary environmental program (wish I could find one in my photo archive! Well, by golly Delta FARM sent me one after I posted!). But most I see fall into the category of sharing information about seed or crop protection products.

They usually show the brand or company (the photos above show an old school D&PL cotton sign and one for DEKALB corn). Keeping the blue jeans analogy, you can buy the RL Chaps jeans I like or Levis. Usually if they have big numbers on them, those numbers tell farmers what variety or hybrid is planted there. Its kind of like when you buy Levi’s jeans you can get 501 or 505 jeans. They are both made out of denim, but they fit different people differently and they may be styled differently, etc so Levi’s may be your thing or Chaps. Sometimes the signs also include other information — maybe they have a marketing tagline like “The Cotton Revolution” or they could have biotech traits on them. There is frequently a way for farmers to tell whether it’s a new or established product too.

Who puts the signs up?

Thank God I’ve never had to do this job! Putting up field signs is hard work and is usually done by the sales person, agronomist or a trainee. Usually they are put up after visiting with the farmer about how his crop is doing, whether he has some varieties that are really performing well, etc. whether it would be okay. The sales people usually bring everything they need so they can put them up — that sometimes means a post-hole digger, posts, signs with different numbers on them, etc. It’s a little different with clothing since the marketing designation is usually on them when they are bought, Levi’s and Chaps put the tags on the outside of the jeans, but you could cut them off or you could buy a “generic” pair of jeans without brand labeling.

Related articles

• Do farm signs mislead customers? What else are we missing? (agricultureproud.com)
• Crop Signs Don’t Mean Corporate Farming (ZweberFarms.com)
• Happy Plot Day! (kmrivard.com)
• Are dairy farms owned by companies or families? (DairyCarrie.com)

The post Why Would a Farmer Put a Sign on a Cotton, Corn or Soybean Field? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I never expected to see a cotton plant in the wild on Hawaii’s Big Island. And my friend Marsha actually saw it first. We thought it was a mirage for a while but we really did see a cotton plant on Hawaii’s Big Island! I was so excited that I couldn’t take photos quick enough! And of course, I had to ask Marsha to take a photo of me with the cotton plant too! And the photo of a cotton plant with the ocean in the background shows you how beautiful the location was here. If you are on the Big Island anytime and wonder about cotton, you may want to go by Lapakahi State Historical Park and visit the one lonely plant. Its an interesting park, a gorgeous view and my favorite fiber all in one!

And you can learn more about cotton from my Cotton 101 page!

The post Look What I Found Growing On Hawaii’s Big Island! Yep! COTTON! :) appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.