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Monday, Oct. 19, 2009

'Tis the season for the fabric of our lives

DOS PALOS -- In less than two minutes, 500 pounds of loose cotton are cleaned, separated from seed and compressed into a chest-high dense bale at the county's last cotton gin operation.

As the cotton crop comes in, the busiest time of year gets under way at the Dos Palos Cooperative Gin.

"This is the heart of the season," said one of the cooperative's managers, Mike Davis.

The first day of this year's ginning season began Friday at the 70-acre facility just north of Highway 152.

The gin is hard to miss. The road leading to it is littered with cotton bolls.

Once the plant's several buildings come into view, long blocks of raw cotton covered in plastic line the property.

But most of the activity is going on inside of one of the sheet metal buildings. Inside, huge blocks of raw cotton were being cleaned, ginned and baled into dense, 500-pound, rectangle blocks. A small staff watch over the operation.

Since 1952, the year the co-op was formed, when the cotton crop comes in it has been separating cotton seed from cotton lint and baling cotton for its members. Now the 96-member co-op, which elects a seven-member board every year, owns two gins in the county and collectively farms more than 35,000 acres across Merced, Madera and Fresno counties.

When the ginning season is in full swing -- from October to December -- 65 people work at the Dos Palos site alone, said Davis.

All the profits from selling the cotton lint, as the seedless cotton is called, goes to the growers. The co-op covers its operating expenses by selling the leftover cotton seed. Last year it sold 40,000 tons of seed. According to the 2008 county agriculture report, cotton seed in Merced was valued at more than $15 million.

While this year's crop is expected to be smaller than last year's, said Davis, cotton is still one of the county's largest commodities. According to the agriculture report it was the 11th-largest commodity.

The smaller crop and the slumping economy have affected operations at the co-op, said Davis. It has only one of its two plants running in Dos Palos, he said. "We have adjusted to the economy like everyone else," he said.

But cotton growers enjoy a cushion when it comes to falling cotton prices, explained Davis. While the world price for a pound of cotton is floating around 55 cents, the U.S. government pays cotton growers an extra 30 cents or so to keep them in business. If the world price goes above about 80 cents a pound, the government stops subsidizing cotton growers. But if it dips below that fixed price, the government pays the farmers the difference.

California's growers produced 786,700 bales of cotton in 2008, according to the National Cotton Council of America. That number was down by half from 2007.

In Merced this year 23,000 acres were in cotton, said David Robinson, the county's agricultural commissioner.

That number may go up next year, said Davis. The price for other commodities is sinking, and that may drive growers back to cotton, he said. Next year's cotton crop is expected to be up 45 percent higher than this year's.

That's getting close to high cotton.

Reporter Jonah Owen Lamb can be reached at (209) 385-2484 or jlamb@mercedsun-star.com.