Market and water trends increase cotton acreage

For the second year in a row, California cotton acreage has been trending upward, thanks in large part to improved water availability.

Growers say a brighter market outlook for cotton and lower prices of other crops such as processing tomatoes also made cotton a more-attractive choice for them to grow this year.

“It certainly had to do with having enough water. That’s why we’re growing the cotton that we’re growing,” said Rick Worth, who grows cotton in Fresno and Kings counties.

He hadn’t planted cotton in four years due to water cutbacks during the drought. Because processing-tomato prices were more favorable then, he decided to sacrifice his cotton acreage to stretch his water supply for other crops, which also include almonds, pistachios, onions and garlic.

But with tomato prices down this year and canneries reducing contracted acreage, Worth said farmers have excess ground and more water to work with. Even without the increased water, he said he may have planted cotton anyway because tomato prices are so low.

“Cotton prices have moved up a little, so I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of acres,” he added.

California farmers are expected to grow 275,000 acres of cotton this year, with 190,000 acres of pima cotton and 85,000 acres of upland cotton, according to a prospective-plantings report released in March by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The state’s farmers planted a total of 221,000 acres of cotton last year, up from 164,000 acres in 2015.

A preliminary planting-intentions survey conducted in March by the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association shows an estimate of 256,000 acres for the 2017 cotton crop, with 186,000 acres of pima and 70,000 acres of upland. This represents a 22 percent increase in state pima acreage and a 6 percent increase in upland acreage compared to 2016. California cotton acreage during the past decade peaked in 2011, when farmers planted 456,000 acres.

Kings County farmer Ted Sheely said he’s growing 20 percent more cotton this year and would have planted more if full Central Valley Project water allocations for farmers had been announced 60 days earlier. Because he had not planned on a full allotment, he did not work his ground, in order to save fuel and money. By the time the announcement came in March, the weather had turned cool and rainy, and his fields became too soggy to get in.

“I didn’t want to work wet ground and not get a good seedbed—and then not get a good stand, and then not make a good crop,” he said. “It’s not one thing; it’s a domino effect that we’re afraid of.”

Sheely had maintained some cotton acreage during the drought, even though “it’s been not very profitable with the price of water,” he said.