By Justin Walker
Communications Specialist
Cotton ginners in the Panhandle are working overtime this season, as numbers continue to rise from last year’s totals.
The Carson County Gin, one of the four largest gins in the Texas Panhandle located between Panhandle and White Deer, had ginned 111,215 bales of cotton during the 2016-2017 season. This year, General Manager Keith Mixon believes they will see that number reach more than 140,000 bales.
“This is the largest crop we’ve ever ginned,” Keith Mixon, general manager of the Carson County Gin, said in an interview with the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “Corn, milo and wheat are not bumper crops right now. Cotton is the only thing really working.”
The three other gins that make up the four largest—Adobe Walls Gin, the Moore County Gin and the Top of Texas Gin—are also seeing large gains this season, which typically runs from October to early April.
Adobe Walls, the leader of the group located in Spearman, is set to double last season’s total of 142,000 bales.
The Moore County Gin north of Dumas has ginned more than 188,000 bales, up from 103,000 last year.
Top of Texas Gin Assistant General Manager Steven Birkenfeld said the gin expects to have about 130,000 bales at the end of the season. Last year, they ginned 108,000.
Birkenfeld explained the growth is attributed to several factors, including expansion of cotton acreage. He said rule of thumb used to be farmers couldn’t plant cotton north of Plainview.
“Then, it became you couldn’t plant north of Tulia,” Birkenfeld said. “Then, it became you couldn’t plant north of I-40. Now you can plant all the way into Kansas.”
The explosion in acreage is a major factor, he said. But Birkenfeld also believes good rainfall in the fall of 2016 and spring of 2017 helped, as well as advancement in genetics.
“We have varieties with a quick enough turnaround that we are growing them up here,” Birkenfeld said. “That’s why the yields are so good with dryland farmers.”
But dry conditions this year have farmers concerned about moisture for the next growing season.
Farmers in the Panhandle have experienced dry conditions for several consecutive months, and drought remains a concern. The National Weather Service in Amarillo reports only one of the past 158 days have seen measurable precipitation, and that was .01 of an inch recorded on Feb. 17.
“We are in dire need of moisture for next year’s crops,” Mixon said. “Our subsoil has no moisture. The drought really hasn’t affected our harvest this year, but it’s time to get some rain.”