Calhoun County Cotton Acres Are Down – Here’s the Reason

If you’ve spent much time at all paying attention to what’s growing in Calhoun County crop fields, you may have noticed a decrease in planted cotton acres. Normally, the crop acreage in our county is split roughly evenly between cotton and peanuts – around 12,000 acres each according to the USDA Ag Census – with soybean acres at 500 or less and corn less still.

However, world economic conditions have pushed cotton prices below the cost of production for American farmers and forced them into a tough decision this year – “Do I plant cotton and definitely lose money or branch out to a different crop and hope to make something?” So, what are the conditions causing persistently low cotton prices and how will it affect what we grow?

As nebulous and complicated as world economic markets might seem, the price of all goods (cotton included) comes down to one basic idea – supply and demand. When supply is low, demand (and price) increases and vice versa.

Put simply, global supply of cotton has exceeded global demand for cotton and price has followed demand down. This has occurred for two primary reasons.

First, people aren’t wearing cotton like they used to. If you’re like me, you don’t often reach for a thick cotton shirt or cotton fabric pants when you get dressed. Rather, people have populated their wardrobes with the light-weight, breathable, sweat-wicking synthetic fibers found in athleisure type clothes (and increasingly in casual and dressy clothes too). If cotton is worn at all, it’s now typically blended with these synthetic fibers. This sea change in fashion has meant much less demand for cotton.

Second, there is simply a huge amount of cotton being produced at the same time fashion trends have changed. While U.S. acres are down in response to price, other countries with lower costs of production continue to crank out vast acres of the fiber. Most troubling, in the 2023-2024 crop year, Brazil surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest cotton exporter. As ag technology, largely developed in the U.S., catches up in these developing countries, they become able to produce cotton, and many other crops, at a lower cost than we can, partially because of cheaper labor and much more relaxed regulatory