THE RISKS OF COTTON PRODUCTION : THE WEATHER AND THE WEEVIL a more or less common saying throughout the South that cotton is dynamite. The phrase means that the two million and more of southern farmers who with their families owe their living to cotton depend upon a commodity subject to the widest variations from year to year. From his first apprenticeship the cotton farmer learns to expect the unexpected. This lesson, however, has not taught him how to provide against it. In fact it is doubtful if cotton farmers can provide against their two greatest risks : the hazard of crop failures, and the hazard of fluctuating prices. Cotton has been and is studied every day from the standpoint of the consumer. Statistics are gathered and interpreted for spinners, and much concern is expressed over shortages in world sup ply. Few serious studies have been made, however, of the producer as he encounters the vicissitudes of failure, near failure, and bumper crops.
The averages of the risks of production for the whole Cotton Belt are set forth in the statistics of acreage planted, acreage harvested, and production in standard bales of five hundred pounds. From these averages the Department of Agriculture has worked out the average number of pounds of lint produced per acre. That the risks of production are very real things even when dis tributed by the averages over the whole belt is shown by the fact that as late as 1921 the production of cotton was less than eight million bales—the lowest crop since 1895. This disastrous crop was not caused by restriction of acreage. The yield per cotton acre for 1921 fell to 124.5 pounds of lint, the lowest of which the Department has any record.
The average yield per acre has varied from this low average of 124.5 to as high as 221 and 222 pounds in 1898 and 1897. An examination of Table VI on p. 125 will show distinct trends in the yield per acre. Up to 1890 the general trend was downward; from 1890 to 1905 the trend was upward, after which it was downward until 1909. From 1909 the trend of yields rose to the high level of 209.2 pounds per acre in 1914. The trend since then has been steadily downward with the exception of a fair yield in 1920 of 178.4 pounds.' It is yet too early to predict whether the movement upward from the low level of 1921 is of significance. The record crop of over sixteen million bales in 1925-26 was mainly owing to immense increase in western acreage as the yield was only 167.2 pounds per acre. The year 1926 saw an aver age yield of 182.6 pounds of lint per acre, the highest since 1914. In 1927 this had slumped to 152.3 pounds.
Four main factors operate to cause changes in the yields per acre: shifts in areas of cotton culture, use of fertilizer, weather conditions, and the depredations of insects, chief of sinners being the boll Of these four factors only the weather conditions and insect dam age may be counted as hazards of production. It hap pens, however, that they are the chief factors influencing yields.
A uniform downward trend over a period of time is not likely to be due to either the weather or the weevil, but more often is due to the exploiting of low-yielding areas.
Such sections are brought into cultivation as higher prices make it profitable. Although the margin of profit may be lower, the cultivation of low-yielding land cannot be regarded as an unforeseen hazard of production. The up ward tendency in yields can be explained, apart from hazards, by the increasing use of fertilizer in the Eastern Belt. The use of fertilizer adds to the cost of production but increases the margin of profit by increasing the yield.
An average of the ten-year trends in yield per acre by states from 1866 to 1915 illustrates some of these gen eral tendencies.' The average yield per acre is lowest in Alabama, due possibly to the inefficiency of Black Belt cultivation, and in Florida, whose sandy soils are poorly suited to cotton culture. During the last three decades the increasing yield per acre in the eastern states can be attributed to the growth in popularity of fertilizers. The highest yields are in Missouri and North Carolina, both until recently, out of the main path of the boll weevil. Up until 1921 the averages of yield in the Western Belt and Alluvial Valley declined because of the weevil. In Texas and Oklahoma an added factor was the extension of culti vation into regions of low rainfall.
Frank H. Vanderlip, writing in 1916, gave four-tenths of a bale an acre as our average production of cotton and compared it with 546 pounds of lint per acre grown under experimental conditions. He cited this low yield as "one of the most gigantic examples of incompetency to be found anywhere."' Such a statement fails to take account of the hazards of cotton growing in that it charges the accidents by flood and field and weevil, which the aver ages distribute, all to one factor, the inefficiency of cultivation.
The Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Crop Re ports, estimates the condition of crops on a basis of 100, representing a normal condition. "This normal is neither an average or ideal crop, but what the fields ought to produce with the normal modes of farming, with normal weather conditions and without unusual loss from disease, insects or other adverse influences. The yield per acre under such favorable, though not extraordinary condi tions, would be a normal yield, which is more than an average yield but less than a maximum possible yield. A normal yield for one farm or section may vary widely from that of another." 4 From this basis of a normal yield the crop reporters send in estimates of loss resulting from various causes. The losses from causes over which man has no control such as weather and weevil (until the discovery of methods of poisoning) have within the last fifteen years ranged from 26 to 52 per cent of the "normal crop." e Such losses in many cases may safely be counted as hazards of production or in the good old legal phrase "acts of God," without reflection on the industry or ef ficiency of the planter. Their reactions on the economic basis of southern society have been serious and profound.