{"id":63305,"date":"2022-08-16T06:07:49","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T11:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63305"},"modified":"2022-08-16T06:07:49","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T11:07:49","slug":"worst-ive-ever-seen-cotton-prices-soar-after-historic-usda-cut-amid-megadrought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63305","title":{"rendered":"“Worst I’ve Ever Seen”: Cotton Prices Soar After Historic USDA Cut Amid Megadrought"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Worst I’ve Ever Seen”: Cotton Prices Soar After Historic USDA Cut Amid Megadrought<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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US cotton prices continued to surge above the\u00a0boom days of 2010-11 after a\u00a0massive crop estimate cut by the USDA<\/strong>, shocking Wall Street analysts and traders, due primarily to a\u00a0megadrought scorching farmland of Texas<\/strong>, according to\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Futures in New York for December delivery were up 4.5% to $1.1359 a pound and up more than 21% this month.<\/p>\n

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“I don’t think you can put a top on prices right now<\/strong>,” Louis Barbera, the managing partner for VLM Commodities, told Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

“I have been going to Texas for more than ten years, and this is by far the\u00a0<\/em>absolute worst I have ever seen<\/em><\/strong>, said Barbera.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What Barbera is referring to is the\u00a0drought situation in Texas<\/a>. The long stretches of triple-digit temperatures and limited rainfall this summer have turned vast amounts of\u00a0farmland to dust<\/strong>, hurting cotton farmers in the South Plains of West Texas.<\/p>\n

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Last Friday, the\u00a0USDA’s bigger-than-expected cut to domestic cotton crop<\/strong><\/u>\u00a0stunned many on Wall Street.\u00a0Crop output plunged to 12.57 million bales, the lowest in a decade<\/strong>. The cut also pushed down the US from the world’s third-largest producer to the world’s fourth.<\/p>\n

Barbera said the western Texas region (around Lubbock and Lamesa), the epicenter of America’s cotton-growing belt, has\u00a0“literally nothing” in fields that are just desert sand.<\/strong>\u00a0He said fields that had drip irrigation were harvestable, but ones that weren’t weren’t salvageable.<\/p>\n