US cotton production to hit 13 million bales

NEW ORLEANS — The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast on Friday that cotton production will increase slightly from last year, to 13 million bales, with record yields expected for some growers in the South.

The report is based on Oct. 1 conditions. A wild card in how things ultimately turn out will be the weather. Rains have plagued parts of the Gulf Coast and Southeast in recent weeks, limiting farmers’ time in the fields and, in some places, taking a toll on the crop as it awaits the completion of harvest.

“We’ve had conditions deteriorate, really, in the major cotton producing areas in the last week, and we’re about to get more rain in the next 15 minutes,” Jack Dailey, a northeast Louisiana farmer, said Friday morning.

Barely halfway through harvest, and managing less than two full days in the field so far this week, Dailey said he’s watched the rains wash away significant yield potential for a once-promising crop.

But he counts himself lucky: he had a good corn crop, and his cotton hasn’t gotten the drenching that other producers’ cotton has. Like many other cotton producers, he’d switched some cotton acres to corn in recent years because of decent prices for the grain, which is less costly to produce.

Nine of 17 cotton states, including Louisiana, are expecting increased production this year, in spite of U.S. growers having planted fewer acres. In Texas, the U.S. cotton king, production is forecast to reach 5 million bales, up from 4.5 million last year. In Georgia, it’s expected to hit about 1.9 million bales, up from 1.6 million. USDA said upland growers in Alabama and Georgia were expecting record yields.

The 380,000 bales forecast for Louisiana, while well above 2008’s hurricane-affected crop, is still dismal when compared with recent years. In 2006, production hit 1.2 million bales.

Several states, including California and Mississippi, are expecting big production declines.

After a tough few years for the industry — marked by a shift in U.S. acreage to corn, soybeans and other crops offering better payoffs and weakened demand for cotton goods amid the global financial woes — the outlook may be brightening, said Gary Adams, chief economist for the National Cotton Council. Prices that farmers get have improved a bit this year, and forecasts are pointing to at least marginal increase in global mill demand for the 2009 marketing year, he said.

But Adams said it’s hard to say whether we’ve seen a bottoming-out in U.S. acreage, which this year totaled 9.1 million. (Last year’s production, according to USDA, was 12.8 million bales.)

“I think if we look at where relative prices are today, looking ahead to the 2010 futures contracts, cotton is in a bit better position than in the last two, three years, but a lot can happen between now and the next planting season,” he said.