Throughout the 2024 production season, USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) continues the cotton monitoring program in West Texas to ensure that crop adjustments are accurate and program integrity is maintained.
This is the third consecutive year in which severe droughts in the Southwest have negatively impacted the cotton industry. In Texas, alone, growers saw production fall by more than half of the state’s 10-year average. Fortunately, for growers, federal crop insurance has played a critical role in partially mitigating the impacts by indemnifying financial losses.
While growers have received compensation through federal crop insurance, downstream businesses have suffered due to sharply lower volumes. Little to no production in portions of the Southwest region have forced some gins to close while others are ginning substantially less cotton, causing negative impacts on local employment and leading to increased consolidation. Marketing cooperatives, merchants, warehouses, and cottonseed processors/handlers have all been impacted by the smaller crops.
While the National Cotton Council is continuing to explore crop insurance options to offset some of the repercussions of the droughts on the downstream segments, RMA has inspectors present to ensure accurate appraisals and will continue to do so throughout this production season and the 2025 crop year.
For questions or concerns regarding the cotton monitoring program, please contact the RMA Regional Compliance Office Director – Mariano Lerma at (214)-767-7711 or(469)-315-0975 or Francie Tolle, Deputy Administrator for Compliance at (816) 926-7829or (405) 684-7363.