By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor
American cotton has a reputation for being some of the cleanest, highest-quality cotton in the world, but an increase in plastic contamination could change that.
Debris in fields and litter contribute to the problem, but over the past three years, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cotton classing offices have found plastic in samples that likely originated from round module wraps.
Small pieces of plastic are torn off the wrap and embed themselves in cotton lint, affecting the overall quality and lowering the price.
It’s a harvest handling issue that starts in the field and carries through to the ginning process, according to Jeff Nunley, executive director of the South Texas Cotton and Grain Association.
In 2018, the USDA classing office in Corpus Christi received more plastic-contaminated bales than any other classing office in the country, Nunley said.
He estimated about 95 percent of Coastal Bend cotton farmers now run cotton harvest machinery that produces the round, wrapped modules, so that’s likely why it’s become a bigger issue in the southern part of the state.
“Our message to farmers and ginners is we’ve all got to be diligent in how we handle these modules,” he said. “During transport to the gin, the handling at gin yard, all of those stages are potential for contamination if the plastic is damaged in any way.”
After a two-year survey using cameras, RFID tags and other technology to study the issue, Cotton, Inc. researchers determined module wraps are most likely to be damaged when staging modules in the field, followed by transport damages and problems with the module feeder at the gin.
“It seems like the biggest issue is when the modules are set down on shredded cotton stalks and the stalks poke holes in the modules,” Nunley said. “The plastic gets inside the module, and then it goes through the process with those little bits of plastic stuck in it. It really creates a huge problem at the mill.”
But the field is not the only place plastic is introduced into modules. To stay debris-free, the modules must be handled with care to the gin and beyond.
“Farmers, harvest machine operators, module movers, module trucks, handlers at the gin yard, handlers setting the modules on the module feeder at the gin—all of those stages in the process are points where it could happen,” Nunley said.
The impact to the U.S. cotton industry is staggering.
“If a four-cent per pound decrease in the premium for U.S. cotton is attributed to plastic contamination, with a crop of 20 million bales, this corresponds to a $384 million annual loss to U.S. growers,” a report from Cotton, Inc. stated.
Since the issue has become more prevalent, farmers are paying more attention and working to prevent contamination, but it’s an ongoing battle, Nunley said.
“All of these things can be problems, but we haven’t found one silver bullet yet. It’s a whole combination of factors that create the potential to introduce plastic into cotton before it gets to the gin,” Nunley said. “It’s going to take vigilance on the part of everybody. It’s not a farmer problem. It’s not a ginner problem. It’s an everyone problem.”
Although plastic in cotton seems to be worse in South Texas, it’s not an isolated issue. Hale County farmer Garrett Mathis said the overall impact is bigger than one farm or one area.
“We want to try to sell as clean of cotton as we can, because it seems like our market is getting smaller and smaller,” he said.
Mathis, who farms in Briscoe, Floyd and Hale counties, said he has tried to adjust module handling techniques to avoid damaging the wraps as much as possible.
“We try to be as careful as we can in the field and try not to set bales down on stalks or bust the wrap on them,” he said. “You can set it down and when you pull off and turn too sharp, you can swing that arm into the bale and rip part of it, or push it along the ground and rip it that way. You just have to take the time and be careful.
Slowing down in the field pays off in the long run.
“They’re a pain to pick up when they bust, and we don’t have a boll buggy to suction it up and a module builder to dump it into anymore, so it’s really hard to gather all that back up and not lose a big portion of it,” he said.
There is some contamination from litter and household trash, but the manager of Crosby County Gin, Philip Manke, said most of the plastic he sees is module wrap.
“A lot of what we see are things like Walmart bags, but most farmers walk the edges of their fields and pull the trash out before harvest,” Manke said. “Most of it’s the wrap off the round modules.”
The gin has trained its employees to watch for plastic pieces or other trash, because every step of the process can introduce contaminants.
“When we unload it, we have guys on two sides to make sure they can see all the way around the modules to make sure there’s no plastic that’s going to go inside,” he said. “And on the feeder, we check between round bales and conventional modules to make sure nothing got stuck there that’s going to get into the next batch coming through.”
The risks are simply too high to not be watchful.
“It could be a perfect bale of cotton and turn up with some plastic, and that will make it take a pretty big hit,” Manke said. “Ginners are doing all we can do, and I think we’re doing a pretty good job, but we have to figure out how to get a handle on this.”
Many are hard at work studying the issue, according to Plains Cotton Growers CEO Steve Verett.
“The National Cotton Council and other leaders in the industry have worked very diligently on this,” Verett said. “There are videos, documents and other types of information available reminding anyone in the chain handling cotton to keep this in mind.”
He noted module wrap contamination in area cotton didn’t start showing up until more recently, because round bale harvesters were first developed for cotton picking machinery, whereas the South Plains uses cotton strippers to harvest.
“But now we’re certainly starting to see that in our part of the Cotton Belt,” he said. “The main problem is the wrap has to be strong enough to hold the bale together and protect the cotton from wind, rain whatever it is, but that presents more of a challenge all through the harvesting chain because it’s so indestructible.”
Not only should farmers and harvesters take care in module placement and stacking the modules to cause as little damage as possible to the wrap, but those responsible for transport must also watch for mishandling, he said.
“When they pick them up and load them in the module trucks and at the gin when it’s loaded on the feeder, there must be a great amount of due diligence that the module is unwrapped properly,” Verett said. “Once it gets into the ginning process and gets into any of the equipment, there can be remnants of the plastic in cotton that didn’t even have plastic wrap to start with. From harvest to gin, we have to do everything we can to keep it out.”
The wrap is an expensive, but necessary part of cotton harvest. The efficiency of stripping and compressing cotton as you go has brought new levels of productivity to farms that was once out of reach, he added.
But cotton farmers cannot let it be the cause of a loss in reputation.
“It’s about two cents a lint pound, which is very expensive. But if the system is what we need and have to have to be efficient, then we have to recognize we can’t risk the reputation of being one of the premium fibers in the world,” Verett said. “That’s what we’ve lived off of for many years in the U.S., and we can’t let this plastic wrap issue become our Achilles heel.”