Cotton Ginning, Handling, and Marketing in the Western Cotton Region

Excerpts from the paper: Cotton ginning, warehousing/compressing, and merchandising services are quite similar across the three areas of Arizona and California (figure 1). Production and associated services in the region tend to be concentrated in the large valleys. In contrast to the Southwest Irrigated Cotton (SWIC) region where production is widely scattered, there are only a few scattered isolated production areas mostly in the Imperial and Mid-Arizona area. High yields and uniform quality characterize production in the irrigated areas of the West. Cotton ginning facilities range from smaller and older standard gins to the modern highly automated gins. The volume of cotton handled per gin, averaging about 10,000 bales in 1974, tends to be larger in the Far West than in other regions. The capacity of gins in the region now averages about 12 bales per hour. Ginners charged about $30.00 per bale in 1975 for ginning and wrapping. In the Far West, most cotton bales are placed in open gin yards after ginning, and then moved to a warehouse by commercial truckers within two weeks. Warehouse charges for three months (including storage, receiving, compression, and shipping) averaged about $9.00 per bale in 1975. There are several cotton market outlets in the Far West, including central market firms, local merchants, salaried and commission buyers, mill buyers, line companies, and gin organizations. A California based, producer cooperative, Calcot, is the principal market outlet in the region. This firm provides nearly 60 percent of the warehouse space in the Far West, and markets about a million bales of cotton annually for its 3,700 grower members. Historically, over 70 percent of the Arizona and California cotton crop is exported, mainly through West coast ports where containers are used for most of the shipments.