Carolina Cotton Notes - The 2000 Cotton Crop

The 2000 cotton crop in North Carolina has been harvested, ginned and classes with 1,406,647 bales having been classed as of February 15, 2001. This puts our yield at about 745 pounds per harvested acre produced on about 925,000 harvested acres. This put North Carolina 5^th in cotton production in the USA behind Texas, California, Mississippi and Georgia. Cotton acreage in North Carolina also ranked 5^th in cotton acreage behind Texas, Georgia, Mississippi and Arkansas. Early indications were that cotton acreage in North Carolina in 2001 will probably surpass 1,000,000 acres. Because cotton prices do not look promising we may end up with less than 1,000,000 acres.

Color grades this year were the best we have seen over the last ten years due to the lack of rainfall during most of the harvest season. The problem with this years crop was short staple and low strength, both of which were as low as they have ever been in the past 10 years. Although total heat unit accumulation was fairly normal this year, lower temperatures and light levels during parts of the boll fill period probably contributed to this. Staple and strength can be affected by environment but they are also influenced by variety selection. We have seen abnormally short staple over the past four years which suggests that variety selection is at least part of the reason for short staple. Hopefully producers will be able to select varieties with longer staple and higher strength in the coming year. We certainly need to get back to our previous staple and strength levels to avoid losing our reputation as an area of high quality cotton production.

Below is a chart that indicates how the 2000 crop compares to the previous 9 crops. The classing data includes NC, SC and VA with the exception of 1999 and 2000, which includes NC only.

Table 1.Classing of the NC, SC and Virginia cotton crops in the past ten years. 1999 and 2000 data includes NC only.

Year	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	Average
Bales classed	650,604	457,396	417,075	803,000	800,000	978,436	930,000	1,005,976	801,492	1,406,647	825,063
Harvested acreage	456,000	375,000	385,000	486,000	790,000	720,000	665,000	705,000	800,000	925,000	630,700
Yield/acre ***	713	730	542	826	506	679	699	713	486	745	664
41 or better grades	65.0%	52.0%	71.7%	73.1%	64.0%	86.6%	74.3%	87.4%	85.3%	97.1	75.7%
32, 42 and 52*	11.0%	29.0%	20.42%	19.2%	29.9%	11.9%	15%	11.2%	10.6%	1.8%	16.0%
Average mike	4.35	4.19	4.6	4.3	4.7	4.1	4.5	4.6	4.2	4.0	4.4
Mike <3.5	2.0%	3.0%	0.6%	3.3%	0.2%	3.6%	0.4%	0.8%	6.1%	7.8%	2.8%
Mike >4..9	6.0%	4.0%	20.0%	2.9%	31.2%	2.3%	11.3%	21.7%	9.8%	0.2%	11.0%
Mike 3.5-4.9	92.0%	93.0%	79.4%	93.8%	68.9%	94.1%	88.3%	77.5%	84.1%	92.0%	86.3%
Average staple	35.7	36.0	35.5	36.1	35.4	35.7	34.8	34.2**	34.6	34.2	35.2
Uniformity	81.0	81.7	81.5	81.5	81.4	81.4	81.4	81.6	81.2	81.0	81.4
Average strength	27.0	27.1	28.3	28.6	28.3	27.3	27.8	27.9	27.8	26.1	27.6
Low strength (<24)	3.5%	2.8%	0.1%	0.5%	0.4%	0.9%	0.1%	0.2%	0%	5.90%	1.40%
Strength (24-26)	35.4%	29.8%	14.5%	15.2%	13.5%	35.9%	22.2%	21.2%	21.6%	56.8%	26.6%
High strength (>26)	61.1%	67.4%	85.3%	84.3%	86.1%	63.2%	77.7%	78.4%	78.4%	37.3%	71.9%
Grassy bales	6%	9%	9.1%	5.8%	6.8%	4.0%	3.0%	3.8%	2.10%	3.00%	5.30%
Barky bales	7%	7%	1.6%	1.2%	1.5%	1.5%	1.9%	1.7%	1.8%	3.6%	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 500 pounds.