Blowing sand and blistering heat have badly damaged the cotton crop in Texas, the country's biggest grower, industry analysts said Wednesday. The losses in Texas, which is expected to plant 4.7 million acres of cotton out of the 9.5 million acres planted to the plant in the United States, range from 500,000 up to 1.5 million acres, they said.
While most of the country's attention was riveted by the devastating floods which drowned large swathes of the US Midwest cropland, farms in Texas were savaged by heat, wind and blowing sand which scythed through emerging cotton plants.
Other analysts believe the rains in the area threw a wrench into most analysts' estimates about those losses, and it would take time to unravel them. "It sure muddies the picture," Sharon Johnson, cotton expert for First Capitol Group in Atlanta, Georgia, said in a separate interview. She said the recent rains and prospects for more showers during the week may slightly lower the losses. "It sure makes the situation not as dire, but we have a long way to go."
Mike Stevens, an analyst with brokers SFS Futures in Mandeville, Louisiana, said the rains in Texas meant that "nobody has a good handle" on how this would affect production and yields. Haldenby explained that half an inch of rain in Texas may just dampen the fields and another round of blowing sand could batter cotton plants this summer. "It clouds the picture as to what the losses are likely to be," he said. "We're definitely looking at a moving target."
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