By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor
Cotton is king in Texas, but dry days and hot temperatures devastated the crop in the Texas Panhandle this year.
Hale County Farm Bureau board member and cotton farmer Bryan Curry said the extended drought of 2018 nearly put him out of business.
“We only had about 4 inches of rainfall between October 2017 and August of this year,” Curry said. “I had good underground moisture, but the problem was we never had enough topsoil moisture to get the plants going.”
High input costs, combined with lack of rain and low yields, spelled trouble for this 46-year-old farmer. Out of 1,800 acres planted, Curry harvested a disappointing 697 acres.
“I started looking at my numbers, and the only way to stay in business was to get some custom work,” Curry said. “With how the drought impacted West Texas, I knew that meant I was going to be traveling somewhere else.”
He ended up in Wellington, Kan., almost 500 miles away from his home in Halfway.
He said it feels surreal to see cotton in Kansas, a place better-known for endless miles of wheat and corn. But Curry said a stroke of divine intervention put him there.
“I prayed about farming and finances, and this was put in my head pretty quick,” he said. “It’s definitely a God thing.”
Curry knew a local crop consultant who moved to Kansas in the late ‘90s. He put Curry in contact with cotton farmers looking for custom harvesters.
In late October, Curry loaded up one cotton stripper, two boll buggies and a module builder. Along with three of his employees, he hit the road north.
They’ve been steadily stripping cotton in Kansas ever since.
“They had some weather delays this year because of rain,” Curry said. “We’re hoping we might be able to pick up a little bit more west of here.”
It wasn’t the cotton harvest he expected, but Curry played the hand he was dealt.