High input costs and low prices are taking a toll on cotton farmers. However, they are also battling an invasive species, making planting options limited for west Texas farmers.
According to Travis Mires, the Plains Cotton Growers President, “With the limited rainfall that we have, you know, and limited irrigation availability that we have. You know, corn and grain sorghum and some of those are just not a very good option for us and on top of that we’ve got so much of the wild pig problem. You know, when you go to go into any type of grains, well, they just wreck you in the fall when that grain gets ready to harvest. Will the pigs come in faster than the combines can get there? You know, so, you know, that’s just one of the big drawbacks to living where we do is we just don’t have a lot of options and cotton is just about our only way of life.”
Right now, it is estimated that there are three million feral pigs in Texas, and they are present in nearly every county.
Mires says that challenges like these are nothing new to cotton farmers, recounting the devastation previously caused by the invasive boll weevil.
“I’ve head about them when I was a kid, but then we just got that wave of those things that came back up from Mexico, and it is just heartbreaking to sit there and to have a good crop in the field and then all of a sudden you go out there and every bowl you pull of the plant has a hole in it from that boll weevil. And luckily, we’ve knocked them back out again. But that probably was one of the toughest points of our lives was when those things came back around.”
Despite these challenges, Mires says that cotton farmers like himself still love their way of life, and he will do it as long as he can.
