The Georgia Cotton Commission (GCC) encourages producers dealing with seed coat fragments from this year’s crop to go to its website for more information, where Ed Barnes with Cotton Incorporated, talks about the issue and why it is so severe.
“Seed coat fragments have popped up in limited capacities across the country every couple of years. We understand several different things about the issue but obviously have a lot of questions,” said Taylor Sills, Georgia Cotton Commission (GCC) Executive Director.
“We have reached out to our friends at the classing office and our friends at Cotton Incorporated and within the university to try to really pinpoint what’s going on with this. Here we are on Jan. 8 and 40.6% of all the cotton from Georgia has been hit with this discount.”
Those deductions are as high as 4.45 cents per pound. It is a huge blow for farmers, considering prices are already low as it is.
“This carries a pretty significant discount. In addition to it being a fiber quality issue, this is hitting our growers’ bottom line and hitting their pocketbooks. A lot of our rural communities, farming is the biggest show in town. This affects the rural communities across our state and obviously in Alabama and Florida, too,” Sills said.
There will be additional discussions with Barnes and Darryl Earnest, the Deputy Administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Marketing Service cotton and tobacco program, at the Georgia Cotton Commission’s virtual meeting on Jan. 27 at 9 a.m.
“If growers want some more information on it, if they want to go to our website, go to the news and there is an article from Ed Barnes at Cotton Incorporated that talks about this issue and where they think it came from and why it’s so severe,” Sills said.
According to the USDA, the Macon, GA Classing Office has classed 2.2 million samples, of which approximately 895,000 contained seed coat fragments.
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