Welcome to the September 27, 2024 issue of Cotton News, a service provided by Plains Cotton Growers Inc. for the cotton industry in the Texas High Plains and beyond.
Farm Bill in the News
The Losses are Mounting and Projected to Get Worse
Originally Published in Southern Ag Today
By Bart Fischer and Joe Outlaw, co-directors of the Texas A&M University Agricultural and Food Policy Center
Over the last two weeks, row crop producers descended on the nation’s capital, lobbying for passage of a new farm bill and highlighting the need for ad hoc disaster assistance. If you do not personally live with the constant barrage of challenges facing our nation’s farmers and ranchers – ranging from droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes to inflation and market collapses – it’s easy to grow numb to their plight. Besides, aren’t farmers and ranchers always on Capitol Hill asking for assistance?
We understand the cynicism, but most people do not realize that this is a direct consequence of the way farm bills are negotiated. While many federal programs are on autopilot (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc) – where we don’t think about them until someone tries to change something – farm bills are negotiated roughly every 5 years on the premise that they need to be responsive to the needs of producers. Unfortunately, rather than responding to the needs of our nation’s farmers and ranchers, farm bills now get caught up in annual spending fights with growers constantly having to defend the farm safety net from attacks. On top of that, the short-term nature of the farm bill leaves producers in a regular state of limbo about what the safety net will cover. For example, producers are planning for the 2025 crop year, but they still have no clue what the safety net will look like for the upcoming crop year (nor do they know if any assistance will be provided to help with 2023 and 2024 losses). If that were not enough, these dynamics have culminated in a situation where “direct government payments” to producers in 2024 are forecasted to hit a 42-year low. The last time we saw so little investment in direct producer support was in 1982 in the midst of the farm crisis of the 1980s. So, while it’s easy to joke that farmers and ranchers are always asking policymakers for something, the system is designed to work that way. Whether or not that approach makes sense is open for debate, but we will save that conversation for another day.
In the meantime, between a stagnating farm bill process, a farm bill extension that is slated to provide virtually no help in 2024, and no ad hoc support from Congress over the last two years, an outside observer might quickly conclude that things must be going extraordinarily well in the farm economy. To the contrary, USDA’s latest net farm income estimate showed a $35 billion decrease in crop cash receipts in 2024 alone, the largest single-year drop in the last 50 years (and the largest 2-year drop in history). 2025 is on track to be considerably worse.
As we noted above, farm bills are on a 5-year cycle because they are supposed to be responsive to the needs of farmers and ranchers. But, support levels are at 42-year lows and growers are facing the prospect of enormous losses. Congress passed a continuing resolution yesterday to extend current government funding levels through December 20th and promptly left town for the final stretch of the campaign season. When they return on November 12th, they will face a very short runway to wrap up farm bill negotiations and provide ad hoc disaster assistance. If Congress decides not to act – and absent a major rebound in the agricultural markets – many of our nation’s producers will enter the New Year in arguably some of the most challenging financial circumstances they’ve faced in decades.
New Dems Call for Farm Bill Before End of Year
Today (Sept. 25, 2024), New Democrat Coalition Farm Bill Task Force Chair Kim Schrier (WA-08) and Vice Chairs Don Davis (NC-01) and Jim Costa (CA-21) sent a letter to House and Senate leadership, and leadership of the House Committee on Agriculture and of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry calling for Congress to pass a strong, bipartisan Farm Bill before the end of 2024.
“America’s farmers are the backbone of our country and communities,” said Farm Bill Task Force Chair Schrier. “They feed and employ our constituents and help power our economy. That’s why Congress must put partisanship aside and pass a robust Farm Bill by the end of the year to avert a harmful lapse in funding for American agriculture.”
“As Members representing rural communities, we know what’s at stake if we don’t get this legislation across the finish line. Democrats are united in fighting to make sure we sustain a vibrant and thriving agricultural economy. New Dems will continue working across the aisle to get a strong, bipartisan Farm Bill to the President’s desk by the end of the year.”
The letter reads in part:
“As New Dems, we are fully committed to working in a bipartisan fashion and finding a pragmatic path forward. By building upon the existing efforts throughout this Congress, we believe that there is a way forward to get legislation to the President’s desk before the end of the year.”
House Republicans Pressure Johnson on Farm Bill
More than half of the House Republican Conference has penned a letter to their own leadership, urging them to put the GOP’s farm bill on the floor during the upcoming lame-duck session.
The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024 passed out of the House Agriculture Committee in May with all Republicans and four Democrats voting yes. But House GOP leadership has slow-walked the legislation to the floor due to concerns about flagging support from Democrats and Republicans.
The letter has high-profile House GOP supporters, including Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson (Pa.), Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (Texas), Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (Ky.), Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (Ark.), Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (Texas) and Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (Okla.).
The letter was led by Republican Reps. Mark Alford (Mo.), Ashley Hinson (Iowa), Mary Miller (Ill.) and Jen Kiggans (Va.).
The GOP lawmakers urge Speaker Mike Johnson to consider the farm bill a “must-pass” bill in the lame duck.
House Republican leadership has told us they are likely to pass a short-term extension of the current farm bill in the lame duck.
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Punkin Center Gin Turns 100
Story Originally Published in the Lamesa Press Reporter
It was a more detailed search in the records before Al Crisp realized his cotton gin, the second oldest in the state and the oldest in West Texas, was turning 100.
He was just off by two years in his calculations. When he first. began researching the age of Punkin Center Gin, he thought it started ginning cotton in 1926. He wanted to be prepared for the big day and thought he had more than enough time to do it.
It was through additional investigation before he realized he was a few months off from the actual June 11, 1924 birth date.
“I just anted to know the history of the place,” Crisp said. “I knew I had prepared for 1926. That turned out to be wrong.”
West Portland Gin in South Texas may be the oldest in the state with a birth date in 1922, but that hasn’t been officially confirmed yet, Crisp said.
He searched through the courthouse records in the basement under his business’ former name, Community Gin, but could not find it. That search didn’t go anywhere. His investigation turned around when someone told him to take the property’s block and section numbers and search within the abstract company for more details. That search led him to find his gin’s past when it was called Farmer’s Gin.
Though he missed the actual birthday, he is holding off the celebrations until after this season’s cotton ginning is over. Then it’ll be a big dinner.
“This is our 100th year ginning cotton,” Crisp said. “We’re going to base it on the cotton season.”
He already has plans installed to commemorate the anniversary. KCBD Lubbock television station is coming out in two weeks to report about the big anniversary. He’s contacted the “Texas Country Reporter,” a weekly syndicated television program that airs in 22 Texas media markets, but hasn’t heard word from them yet. The ag museum in Lubbock is also aware of the centennial birthday.
Not everyone would delve so deeply into a business’ actual age. But Crisp, who purchased the facility 25 years ago, is an amateur genealogist and historian who can trace his family history in Nacogdoches in the years 1836-1845 before Texas became a state. His family’s history as Texans and serving in the Confederate military during the Civil War allowed him to join the Sons of the Republic of Texas and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. His family has been a part of Texas for almost 200 years.
Ross and A.C. McDonald built the gin with two gullet gin plants at the Punkin Center Gin’s current location on CR H in Welch. The gins had the capacity to produce six bales of cotton each hour.
A gullet gin, made from wood, has long been replaced by more modernized steel equipment. The gins at Punkin Center Gin operate in a similar fashion with sharp combs separating the cotton from the seeds, but now they are run by computers and touch panels.
Mechanical cotton ginning has been in existence since the first machine was invented in 1793. There was a time when it took human labor to brush out the seeds from the lint. The first cotton gin did the same process, but with minimal human labor.
A century ago, Punkin Gin’s original owners named the two gins Farmers Gin #1 and #2.
Since its beginning, the gin has fallen into several hands through the century.
E.K. Allen bought half of the gin business from the McDonalds in 1951. Six years later, Pete Brewer bought Allen’s interest.
It wasn’t until Charlie Bruton purchased the two plants in 1965 that the gin got its current Punkin Center Gins, Inc. name. Ralph Mires went into partnership with Bruton at 20-percent working interest while working as the gins’ manager. When Bruton died in 1970, Mires bought the gins from his widow.
How the business got its name is unverifiable. it seems a community softball team showed up for a tournament but not a name. They called themselves Punkin Center. They may have gotten it from Poka Lambro, a local telephone provider that’s still in operation, who named a section of their operations with the 806-489 phone number, called the Punkin Center exchange.
“That came form some of the older people who were here,” Crisp said. “That’s what they told me. it was named after a softball team.”
Crisp purchased the business from Mires in 1999. His wife, Kasha, runs the office part of the business. Some of the employees are the grandsons of previous workers.
“It’s not just a living. It’s a legacy,” Crisp said.
The company employees three workers. When the ginning season starts, the company hires roughly 25 workers.
Crisp worries about the future of cotton ginning. There was a time when Dawson County had 12 cotton gins. That number has dwindled to only five.
“The gins in the state of Texas are in trouble,” Crisp said. “Gins are not covered by the ag insurance (that protects farmers with failed crops). If a crop is missed, we’re not covered by the government. We don’t get anything.”
Dawson County enjoyed a bumper crop three years ago. The two previous crops failed. Crisp predicts another bad season this year.
“There’s nothing to sustain business,” Crisp said.
Gin owners have to plan for the future by saving funds to carry them through the tough years.
“Right now, it’s getting hard where we have to live on a crop every three years,” Crisp said.
Punkin Center Gin averages about 40,000 bales of cotton every year. Crisp expects the gin will produce 12,000 bales this season.
The gin has undergone numerous automations. It was the first west of the Mississippi to have jet dryers, all automatic strapping , fiber optics and the round bale unwrapper called a “spider.”
Crisp has been involved in the cotton industry since he began working at 14 with the Smith Gin in Odem. He’s the only one in his family who never had to pick cotton by hand.
After graduating from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville with an agricultural mechanization degree, he headed to West Texas where he landed a job with the Texas Cotton Ginners Association. He then worked for the O’Donnell Co-op as plant manager for three years before purchasing Punkin Center Gin. He was only 25 when he bought the business.
“This is my hobby. This is what I love to do,” Crisp said. “If I hit the lottery and won all the money in the world, I’d still be in cotton ginning. I just love to gin.”