Recently, Darren Hudson, a professor within Texas Tech's Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics, was featured in a timely cotton-related economics article by Tyne Morgan in the Farm Journal Ag/Web. Here's part of the takeaway.

It's tough times for cotton producers on the Texas High Plains. An area known as the largest cotton patch in the U.S. is seeing another year of relentless drought, and with fields resembling the Dust Bowl prospects for this year's crop are dwindling by the day, as is the outlook for this year's cotton acres. 

Reuters' pre-report trade estimate has U.S. cotton acres at 11.2 million acres. That's a sharp drop from last year when farmers planted 13.7 million acres. 

Now, the National Cotton Council's planting intensions survey, which is a grower survey done in February, shows that farmers planned to plant 11.4 million acres of cotton, which is 17% lower than last year's number. 

Their survey showed the biggest hit to acreage would come from Texas, where growers surveyed showed a 21.2% drop in cotton acres this year. 

“Most of the surveys that have come out so far, mainly the National Cotton Council and Cotton Grower magazine, are above 11 million acres,” said Darren Hudson, Larry Combest Endowed Chair for Agricultural Competitiveness at Texas Tech University. “If you look at the corn:cotton ratio, which is sort of the historical benchmark that we use, it would predict more like 9.5 to 10 million acres. But the planting intentions report released on March 31st by USDA also shows slightly above 11 million acres.” 

“This planting intentions report might move the market a little bit, but we'll see what happens, but I do think there's a number of structural issues on the demand side that are probably weighing heavy on the future expectations,” Hudson said.

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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