Cotton Remains Staple of Texas Midwest’s Economy
Published Mar 18, 2008
The Texas Midwest’s 2007 cotton crop yielded the region’s largest recorded harvest in history.
Jeff Posey has been riding a tractor through vast cotton fields almost since he could sit up.
“Cotton farming has been my life all of my life,” says Posey. “Since I was old enough to know anything, cotton farming has been in my blood, I guess.”
Posey is now a successful cotton farmer himself in Roby. His grandfather used to let him ride along for hours and hours, soaking everything in: the sky, the leafy cotton plants and, in the harvest season, the cloudlike blooms stretching for acres.
“When the fields are ready to harvest, they’re just really beautiful white, like a snow bank,” he says.
As important as it is beautiful, cotton is a staple of the Texas Midwest, a source of livelihood for many who call the region home.
“In the rolling plains of Texas, there’s three things. There’s cotton, cattle and wheat,” says John Fox, area director for
the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Cotton Program. “Cotton is a major economic factor in the rolling plains of Midwest Texas.”
As of Nov. 1, 2007, the whole state had produced more than 8.1 million bales of cotton for the year, the yield of more than 4.7 million acres, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Survey. In 1997, Texas cotton produced more economic value than cotton in any other state, to the tune of $1.6 billion.
“It’s a large deal, especially to the smaller communities,” Fox says. “What do they say? A dollar in ag generates another seven dollars as it trickles through the area.”
The harvest in 2007 brought an exceptional boon to the industry. The crop was the largest they’ve ever seen, according to Fox.
Posey also makes note of 2007’s good fortune but says one has to take the good with the bad. He points to the 17-year dry streak between 1987 and 2004.
“We really struggled,” he says. “We were in survival mode. This is one of those deals where it’s either feast of famine. But if it’s in your blood, you really love it.”
Cotton, though less prominent now than perhaps 50 years ago, is still in the Texas Midwest’s blood, according to both Fox and Posey. Posey has raised his two sons around the fields and the tractors. Now his children, both young men in college, help him on their 4,500-acre farm.
“There’s not as many people in the area that are hands-on farmers as what there used to be 20 or 30 years ago, but it still has a large impact on the area,” Posey says. “For those who love it, it’s a great way of life. It’s a tough life when Mother Nature’s not kind to you, but it’s very satisfying.”
Story by Michaela Jackson
Photo by Wes Aldridge
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