Above the Belt
Cotton Belt shifts north into Kansas’ amber fields of grain
By Stephen Thompson,
Assistant Editor
ost people don’t think of Kansas as a cotton
state, but for a growing number of farmers
there, the crop that most people associate
with the South (or California’s southern
Central Valley) has become a promising new
source of revenue on the plains.
The Southern Kansas Cotton Growers Cooperative is
promoting so-called “stripper cotton” as a high-value
alternative to other crops. It is rotated with wheat, the area’s
primary crop. The advantage of cotton is significant: it
thrives in the dry conditions that make growing non-irrigated
corn and soybeans a risky proposition in the western areas of
the state.
On irrigated land, this cotton uses about a third of the
water required for corn. Depending on market conditions, it
usually also offers substantially better returns per acre than
other crops.
Boll weevil-free zone
Kansas has an important advantage over the South when it
comes to growing cotton: the boll weevil, scourge of
Southern growers for generations, doesn’t like the state’s cold
winters. There are records of cotton being grown in the state
over 100 years ago.
The cooperative provides ginning services – processing the
crop to make it market ready – and offers technical assistance
in growing and harvesting the crop. Members also belong to
Plains Cotton Cooperative Association, a co-op based in
Lubbock, Texas, which markets their cotton.
Bob Miller, president of Southern Kansas Cotton Growers
Co-op, says that he got interested in growing the crop about
10 years ago “when I watched one of my neighbors make
more money off of 160 acres than I was making off of 160
acres of sorghum.” He started with 320 acres, and now farms
as many as 1,900 acres of cotton each year.
Southern Kansas Cotton was founded 10 years ago by
several farmers in the Winfield area, about 30 miles southeast
of Wichita and just north of the Oklahoma state line. Several
farmers had been experimenting with the crop, but found
that transporting their cotton more than 100 miles to the
nearest gin was imposing heavy costs.
The growers got together and purchased a used cotton gin
with the help of a Small Business Administration loan. They
used their wheat trucks to move the gin in pieces.
The first year of operation was a rocky road. Lacking
experienced in running or maintaining the plant, breakdowns
and other snags prevented completion of processing a small
harvest until almost six months after harvest.
“Cotton culture” missing
The cotton pioneers had other problems too.
Traditionally, cotton is not an easy crop to grow. It requires
careful management and specialized expertise. Like any crop,
it also needs a local support infrastructure of processors,
storage facilities, buyers and suppliers.
The lack of a “cotton culture” in Kansas meant that none
of these were locally available. It also meant that there was
nobody close by to depend on for advice.
“You couldn’t ask people in town; you couldn’t ask the
county extension agent,” says Miller. The necessary farm
machinery wasn’t locally available either, nor were the parts
or expertise to maintain it.
The oddest hurdle, perhaps, was the hostility of some of
the locals. “Some people just don’t like the idea,” says Miller.
“They say Kansas is wheat-growing country.” That attitude
has led to problems for some growers leasing from
landowners who forbid growing cotton on their property.
In 1996, the Freedom to Farm Act allowed grain farmers
more flexibility to grow alternative crops, boosting local
interest in cotton. By 1999, the co-op realized it needed
outside expertise. Production was up, but the operation
continued to have problems getting the cotton processed in
the expected time, and two new gins built nearby threatened
to leave it without customers unless the plant could be
brought up to speed.
Just in time for harvest, the co-op hired an experienced
manager, Gene Latham, from the cotton country of West
Texas. Educated as an entomologist, Latham had spent his
career working for cotton co-ops as a crop consultant and
manager.
“He knew what to do and who to call,” says Miller.
Timely ginning essential
Even before he arrived in Winfield, Latham hired a crew,
including a gin supervisor.
“Cotton is worthless until you gin it,” Latham says. “And
it needs to be ginned in a timely fashion so the farmers can
get their money and pay their bills.” The problem was that
the co-op members just didn’t have the background to
operate and maintain the gin.
“They were wheat farmers,`” Latham says, who weren’t
aware that a gin needs overhauling after every season. As a
result, the machinery was in dire need of a rebuild.
The crew spent 28 days going over every part of the gin,
replacing and refurbishing where needed to bring it up to
specifications. Latham, meanwhile, was out in the field
visiting farmers, convincing them that Southern Kansas
would be able to process their crop.
When the ginning began, the crew worked the customary
12-hour days, seven days a week. “That’s part of the culture,”
Latham says. “You work until the job is done. This year
we’ve worked every day except for three days at Christmas.”
Local labor isn’t used to that kind of schedule, says
Latham, so the gin uses experienced labor from Texas. “Gin
people are used to working around the clock during the
ginning season and making good money.”
Technical assistance is the other service provided by the
cooperative. Latham says it offers a complete consulting
program, at cost, that allows a local farmer to start growing
cotton with confidence. “We do soil sampling,
recommendations on tillage, weed control, insecticides –
everything they need,” he says.
Steep learning curve
Latham says that local farmers, used to growing grain,
have a fairly steep learning curve at first. “They’re not used
to growing row crops,” he says. But after some years of
farming cotton, many farmers are now able to go it alone.
According to Latham, farmers with 41 percent of the cotton
acreage avail themselves of the co-op’s technical consulting
service.
New varieties of cotton make it much easier on the novice
grower. Keeping weeds down was a problem for the Kansas
growers because most cotton has a high sensitivity to weedcontrol
chemicals. Further, chemical controls used in the
South don’t always work in Kansas. Roundup-Ready cotton,
which became available seven years ago, greatly simplifies
control of weeds.
Local farmers don’t have the specialized spraying
equipment needed to apply older types of herbicide on weeds
growing between rows without harming the cotton plants.
The original versions of Roundup-Ready cotton allowed
producers to spray their cotton fields only until the plants
began to develop fruit. After that, herbicide spraying would
prevent development.
But the latest Roundup-Ready cotton varieties, called
“Flex,” are tolerant of approved weed-control chemicals at
any time until harvest. Miller calls Roundup-Ready cotton
“sort of cotton for dummies.”
Cotton novices today also have many other advantages
over their predecessors. The development of a local “cotton
culture” is now well along. Equipment and supplies are now
readily available locally, and cotton infrastructure is growing.
A number of farmers now offer custom-harvesting
services. The acreage of cotton farmed by members of the
cooperative has grown by a factor of 10, and the amount of
cotton ginned at Winfield has risen from 9,000 bales in 1999
to 28,000 projected for 2006.
The co-op has even purchased a second gin 45 miles away
near the town of Anthony.
USDA provides financial boost
In 2006, the cooperative secured a $558,000 Rural
Economic Development Loan from USDA Rural
Development, administered by the Sumner-Cowley Electrical
cooperative, to update and expand its productive capability.
The funds were used to purchase specialized trucks and
equipment, helping to add 50 bales a day in capacity.
Despite cotton’s rapid growth in Kansas, the crop still has
a lot of room for expansion there. Experts estimate that the
state could easily farm 200,000 acres of cotton a year, more
than twice the current acreage. Latham thinks that figure is
conservative. Plains Cotton Cooperative Association, the
marketing co-op, opened a cotton warehouse near Liberal,
Kan., in 2004.
Latham is very optimistic about the co-op’s future.
“We haven’t grown as quickly as we might have this year
because of record-high grain prices,” he says. But as water
tables are depleted in the western part of the state, cotton
will become more important there by necessity, he thinks. In
the Winfield area, cotton just outperforms other crops. “Our
biggest problem,” he says, “is going to be keeping up with
demand for our services.”
