Carolina Cotton Notes - The 1999 Cotton Crop

The 1999 cotton crop in North Carolina has been harvested, ginned and classes with 801,492 bales having been classed. This puts our yield at about 486 pounds per harvested acre produced on about 800,000 harvested acres. About 80,000 planted acres were not harvested, orimarily due to hurricane damage. From all indications, cotton acreage in North Carolina in 2000 will probably increase to around 950,000 acres. Although cotton prices do not look promising other commodities prices are not healthy either.

This year in North Carolina we had a cool period for early plant development. Dry weather in some areas delayed cotton emergence into mid to late June. Most of the North Carolina crop looked very promising going into the end of August. The hurricane season made a promising crop a very poor drop. We saw one of the highest percentage of the crop grade 41 or better that we have seen in the 90's due to the excellent fall weather following the September hurricanes that allowed producers to get the crop out of the field. The dry weather also allowed the cotton to bleach out in the field and improve color. The dry fall following the hurricanes resulted in a lower than average amount of light spot (32,42, and 52 grades) .

Micronaire (mike) was lower than average due to hurricane damage to the bottom crop and the lack of sunlight and heat in the September hurricane period as micronaire is formed during the later stages of boll development. The staple of the crop was lower than any other year in the 90's other than 1998. This is a alarming trend. This may be due to the tremendous change to Roundup Ready varieties that has occurred in the past two years. Staple (fiber length) is determined in the early half of boll development. Stress during this period probably contributed to low staple. While we may be able to lay some of the blame on weather, growers certainly need to evaluate the quality performance of varieties this year.

Strength above normal while and Uniformity were fairly average. Bales with remarks for grass or bark were lower than the 10 year average.

Below is a chart that indicates how the 1998 crop compares to the previous 9 crops. The classing data includes NC, SC and VA with the exception of 1999, which includes NC only.

Table 1.Classing of the NC, SC and Virginia cotton crops in the 1990's.
1999 data includes NC only.

Year	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	Average
Bales classed	265,772	650,604	457,396	417,075	803,000	800,000	978,436	930,000	1,005,976	801,492	710,975
Harvested acreage	200,000	456,000	375,000	385,000	486,000	790,000	720,000	665,000	705,000	800,000	558,200
Yield/acre ***	664	713	730	542	826	506	679	699	713	486	655.8
41 or better grades	68.0%	65.0%	52.0%	71.7%	73.1%	64.0%	86.6%	74.3%	87.4%	85.3%	72.7%
32, 42 and 52*	8.0%	11.0%	29.0%	20.42%	19.2%	29.9%	11.9%	15%	11.2%	10.6%	16.6%
Average mike	4.49	4.35	4.19	4.6	4.3	4.7	4.1	4.5	4.6	4.2	4.4
Mike <3.5	1.0%	2.0%	3.0%	0.6%	3.3%	0.2%	3.6%	0.4%	0.8%	6.1%	2.1%
Mike >4..9	15.0%	6.0%	4.0%	20.0%	2.9%	31.2%	2.3%	11.3%	21.7%	9.8%	12.4%
Mike 3.5-4.9	84.0%	92.0%	93.0%	79.4%	93.8%	68.9%	94.1%	88.3%	77.5%	84.1%	85.5%
Average staple	35.3	35.7	36.0	35.5	36.1	35.4	35.7	34.8	34.2**	34.6	35.33
Uniformity	81.3	81.0	81.7	81.5	81.5	81.4	81.4	81.4	81.6	81.2	81.4
Average strength	26.5	27.0	27.1	28.3	28.6	28.3	27.3	27.8	27.9	27.8	27.66
Low strength (<24)	8.4%	3.5%	2.8%	0.1%	0.5%	0.4%	0.9%	0.1%	0.2%	0%	1.69%
Strength (24-26)	47.1%	35.4%	29.8%	14.5%	15.2%	13.5%	35.9%	22.2%	21.2%	21.6%	25.6%
High strength (>26)	44.6%	61.1%	67.4%	85.3%	84.3%	86.1%	63.2%	77.7%	78.4%	78.4%	72.7%
Grassy bales	-	6%	9%	9.1%	5.8%	6.8%	4.0%	3.0%	3.8%	2.10%	5.51%
Barky bales	-	7%	7%	1.6%	1.2%	1.5%	1.5%	1.9%	1.7%	1.8%	2.9%

* 10.2% of the bales in 1997 were classed as 51.

** 26% of bales in 1998 had a 33 or lower staple length.

*** Yield per acre assumes average bale size of 490 pounds.