This month Darren Hudson, a professor within Texas Tech's Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics, was featured in a timely cotton-related economics article by the Daily Mail, a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news website published in London. Here's part of the takeaway.

Texas produces almost half of America's cotton, and the United States is the world's third largest supplier, behind India and China. This year, national production will hit its lowest level since 2015, down 21% year-on-year, and Texas will suffer a 58% drop, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.

In the northwest region of the state, where cotton is the lifeline of the local economy and water is scarce, the 2022 harvest, "could be one of the worst in 30 years," worries Darren Hudson, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas Tech University.

With the cascading consequences for the global textile industry, in an economy already reeling from the pandemic, Hudson put the likely economic impact for the region at $2 billion.

In Lubbock, the region's cotton hub, rainfall over the past 12 months has roughly been half its normal volume, and what little fell came too late to save the crop.

Cotton farmers in the plains of Texas know there will always be bad years, but the drought of 2022 could be the worst yet. The region is "seeing worse conditions than this time last year," and these are settling in over time, said Curtis Riganti, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center.

CONTACT: Darren Hudson, Professor, Larry Combest Endowed Chair for Agricultural Competitiveness and Director of International Center for Agricultural Competitiveness, Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics, Texas Tech University at (806) 834-0546 or darren.hudson@ttu.edu

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