Almost nothing is left of his cotton fields, perhaps 20 percent can still be saved. The drought ravaging part of the US has wiped out most of the production of Sutton Page, a farmer in Texas.
This year’s harvest “isn’t the best,” he says with the reticence of a man who’s been through a lot. The reality is a catastrophe: In his region in the north of the state, he assures the AFP news agency by telephone, almost all of his colleagues will not even harvest their cotton and will leave their fields “bare, bare”.
Harvest could be halved
Almost half of US cotton is grown in Texas, with the US being the world’s third largest supplier after India and China. This year, statewide production will fall to its lowest level since 2015, down 21 percent year-on-year, and Texas will suffer a 58 percent slump, according to the latest US Department of Agriculture estimates.
In the northwest of the state, where “cotton is king” and water is scarce, the 2022 crop could be “one of the worst in 30 years,” fears Darren Hudson, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas Tech University. Coupled with the cascading impact on the rest of the textile industry, he estimated the region’s economic losses at $2 billion in August.
Landon Orman, 30, farms 2,000 acres near Abilene, three hours west of Dallas. His unirrigated cotton “didn’t even germinate,” while the partially irrigated one grew, but the yield was probably cut in half. Overall, he estimates, production is 85 percent lower than in a normal year.
Second hottest summer
Like so many others, he has crop insurance, so “financially it’s fine”. But as a farmer, it’s really annoying that we can’t grow our crops, but that’s what I like,” he says.
In Lubbock, the local cotton capital, rainfall for the past 12 months — before rains that came late in August — was only half normal.
“From January to May we had literally no rain,” summarizes 48-year-old Sutton Page. Minimal rains in winter and spring left very dry soil at the time of sowing. “And from May there were days with temperatures above 37 °C and wind speeds of 50 kilometers per hour, and everything burned up,” he recalls. Texas experienced its second hottest summer on record.
“It’s a bit depressing, you work hard all year round, preparing your crops, spreading fertilizer and your plants don’t grow,” continued the farmer, who is also chairman of the Rolling Plains Cotton Producers Association “is one of those years you’ll tell your grandkids about,” notes Barry Evans Of his 800 acres of cotton fields near Lubbock, only the irrigated quarter is harvested, the rest is abandoned.
Are droughts becoming more frequent?
As a farmer on the Texas highlands, “you know there’s going to be bad years,” says Evans, “it’s part of life here.” “You don’t forget 2011, with its drought and very poor harvest,” says the 60-year-old farmer. That of 2022, which closes at the end of the year, could be even worse. Will they become more common then?
The region is “suffering from worse conditions than last year,” and those conditions are settling over time, notes Curtis Riganti, a climatologist for a research center that studies drought. However, he is wary of attributing this to climate change, which is causing extreme weather events to become more frequent and intense around the world.
“In the last 10 years, there have been maybe five or six drought years, and one or two of them have been catastrophic,” says Kody Bessent, director of the Lubbock Region Cotton Farmers’ Association.
There’s a lot of debate among farmers: “It’s been such a hot summer,” “We’re all wondering: are droughts getting more common?” Barry Evans notes. It’s “a main topic of conversation”. These farmers from Texas, a state with many climate skeptics; they, in turn, are more likely to see cycles repeating themselves without being sure. While waiting for answers, everyone tries to keep the soil moist. (AFP)