Noticias
y campañas
de la OCA
en español
BRAWLEY, Calif. - When a cotton gin is running, it smells like hay, twigs and "freshly washed sheets," said Wally Leimgruber, a former cotton farmer. But as is often the case, the gin at the Planters Ginning Company here was silent as Mr. Leimgruber walked the dusty floor one recent afternoon.
Three piles of fleece-covered cotton seeds sat 20 feet high outside, right where they had fallen a month earlier, spit from pipes connected to the gin.
"It's sad," said Mr. Leimgruber, 54, an Imperial County supervisor who as a child picked cotton beside his Swiss grandfather in nearby family fields. "It's like a cemetery to me."
Planters is the last of seven gins that once served the Imperial Valley here in Southern California. But it will close this year as the number of farmers growing cotton continues to shrink.
Last year, the gin processed cotton from three farmers only who grew less than 300 acres, said Bobby Reed, a gin worker. In the late 1970s, 120,000 acres of cotton were grown in the Imperial Valley, about a quarter of its farm land.
Pest infestations in recent decades caused a decline in cotton acreage, and the decline accelerated as fuel costs soared and urban centers like San Diego, about 90 miles to the west, pushed for a larger share of the state's stretched water supply. Cotton is a water intensive crop, and the fields here are irrigated by canals that draw from the Colorado River, the source of drinking water for much of Southern California.
"Once you begin to reduce acreage and gins close, you lose the infrastructure and it makes it harder to come back," said Mark Bagby, director of communications for Calcot, a cotton cooperative.
In the past five years, cotton acreage across California has shrunk by almost half, according to the federal Department of Agriculture. Farmers are turning to alfalfa hay, corn and wheat, commodities that require less irrigation and have been dipped in gold by the competing demands for biofuel and cattle feed.
While the new crops make economic sense, it has been a reluctant transition for two generations of farmers who had cut their teeth on cotton.
"Cotton is ingrained in me," said Mike Cox, 54, whose family grew cotton in the Imperial Valley for more than five decades, ending with his last crop in 2004. "It's the first crop that I really knew."
Mr. Cox learned from his father how to anticipate the whims of a crop that needs precisely timed doses of water and fertilizer. His skills were honed in the long season of planting, weeding, watching and waiting for the bolls - the so-called fruit of the cotton plant - to swell with lint.
"There's something about cotton," he said. "It's a showy crop."
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/19cotton.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
In Southern California, a Cotton Industry Fades
-
By REBECCA CATHCART
The New York Times, February 19, 2008
Straight to the Source
