alafarmnews

October usually means colorful leaves in the North and a “snowstorm” in the South.
Now that Autumn has arrived, tourists are flocking to New England to watch the maple leaves change to red and gold. Tourism is a multi-million dollar industry in New Hampshire, Vermont and other northeastern states and there are no indications it will be any different this year than in past years.

Such is not the case in Alabama and the reason can be summed up in one word—Ivan. Alabama’s cotton farmers had been expecting a bumper crop of their fluffy white fiber product until the third in a series of devastating hurricanes in the Deep South struck the state on
Sept. 16.

Some of the state’s most productive cotton counties suffered their worst losses in recent history because the storm couldn’t have come at a worse time. Harvesting was only days away when Ivan roared ashore at Alabama’s Gulf Coast and worked its way north toward the Black Belt where cotton has been planted for more than 150 years.

“We knew something would hit us, but this was far worse than Opal,” said Dan Rhyne, referring to the 1995 hurricane that also did extensive damage to row crops in the state.

Rhyne’s family operates four farms — in Autauga, Dallas, Lowndes and Perry counties — and has been cultivating cotton for decades.

Dallas County cotton farmer Roy Moore was expecting a bumper crop this fall, but Hurricane Ivan dashed those hopes as it wiped out more than half of Alabama’s cotton crop.

Hurricane Ivan devastated much of the cotton crop in central Alabama in September, but workers hopped aboard their cotton pickers a few days later and retrieved what they could from the Rhyne family farm near Selma.

Moore had been hoping for a $500,000 crop. Now, he knows he’ll be lucky to make $200,000. That’s the price of one cotton picker.

According to the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, the state has about 600,000 acres of cotton and part of it in the central portion of the state was impacted one way or another by the hurricane.

The main problem this year was the condition of the bolls. They were in great shape, but vulnerable to wind and rain.

All Moore could do on Sept. 17 was examine his fields and count his losses. Row after row of cotton stalks were reduced in the number of bolls he had been expecting to produce a great crop.

Rain will lessen cotton’s value to a degree, but it isn’t all that bad because the sun will dry it out in a few hours, Moore said. It’s the wind that takes the highest toll. High wind can blow the fiber to the ground where it can’t be retrieved by cotton pickers. Once the fiber hits the muddy ground during a storm, it’s as though it never existed.

Alabama agriculture officials estimate that some Black Belt cotton farmers lost well over half of this year’s crop. Moore and Rhyne indicated they lost at least 60 percent or more of their crops.

Alabama’s Tennessee Valley region leads the state in cotton production and apparently did not suffer the same kind of damage as the Black Belt which received significant wind and rain.

Tim Placke, deputy director of the Alabama Statistical Office under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Limestone County led the state in cotton production last year with 106,000 bales from 61,000 acres, yielding 834 pounds of lint per acre. Madison, Lawrence and Colbert counties in north Alabama finished second, third and fourth in cotton production in 2003.

In the Black Belt, Dallas County farmers produced 19,200 bales of cotton on 11,700 acres, yielding 788 pounds of lint per acre. The state yield average last year was 772 pounds per acre, Placke said. Details about damage to the crop as a result of Hurricane Ivan are expected to be released this month, he said.

Tim Wood, general manager of Central Alabama Farmers Co-op, said he experienced problems receiving crop protection products because of storm-related problems from the Atmore distribution center.

“We all hope it’s not as bad as it initially looked,” Wood said. “Acreage that hasn’t been defoliated won’t be hurt nearly as bad as those that were.”

Much of Moore’s cotton sites had been defoliated and he didn’t have to be told what that meant when he inspected his land after the hurricane passed through Dallas County.

He said he has felt like quitting following natural disasters in the past, but will keep going until he’s too old to maintain the pace at his 1,200-acre operation.

“At times, I’ve thought about giving up the cotton business,” he said. “But, this is my livelihood. I’ve got to keep going.”

No one’s quite sure how long cotton’s been around, but evidence suggests it first was harvested thousands of years ago. Scientists searching caves in Mexico found pieces of cotton believed to have been 7,000 years old. It apparently was grown much like it is today.

In Pakistan’s Indus River Valley, cotton was grown, spun and woven into cloth 3,000 years B.C. At about the same time, cotton was being turned into clothing in Egypt’s Nile Valley.

The earliest cotton seed in the “New World” was planted in what is now Florida in the mid-1500s. By 1616, colonists were growing cotton along the James River in Virginia.

America became a major provider of cotton to European markets in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially during the industrial revolution and Eli Whitney’s gin, which he patented in 1793.

Gins enabled American growers to become major factors in providing cotton to the rest of the world. Within a decade of Whitney’s patent, the value of the U.S. cotton crop jumped from $150,000 a year to more than $8 million.

Alabama farmers have been among the country’s most productive cotton growers and this year’s crop had been expected to be among the best ever. State farmers were sympathetic after watching television reports of the damage on the Gulf Coast, but, Rhyne tried to put things in perspective.

“Expensive houses and boats were destroyed or damaged, but what about the businesses that were wiped out?” he said. “People relied on them to support their families. Now they have nothing.”

Alvin Benn is a freelance writer from Selma.

Interesting tidbits about cotton:

(1) The word cotton is derived from an Arabic word “qutun” or “kutun” which was used to describe any fine textiles.

(2) Alexander the Great’s army brought cotton into Europe, but the cloth was so expensive that only the rich could afford it.

(3) America’s cotton industry became important in the 18th century when Britain used its colonies to provide a lucrative crop for worldwide customers.

(4) By the early 19th century, the southern states became the biggest single supplier of cotton to English textile mills.

(5) By the end of the 1920s, the U.S. was growing more than half the world’s cotton. Since that time, cotton growing has become popular in Europe and Asia.