When it came to planting cotton this year in May and June, farmer Matt Brignac realized his roughly 2,800 acres of farmland in Oktibbeha and Lowndes counties were too wet for his usual even split of corn and cotton.

So instead Brignac leaned a little more on corn this year, planting roughly 1,300 acres of corn and about 700 acres of cotton. Most of the remaining land was too damp to plant anything, he said.

“Once you get to a certain planting date on cotton, your likelihood of that being a profitable crop (declines),” Brignac told The Dispatch. “… Sometimes we gamble and take that risk, but this year, we were just so far behind after that date that by the time we would have been able to plant that ground it was not a risk that anybody was willing to take.”

Mississippi is projecting a yield of about 760,000 bales of cotton this year, a sharp decline from about 1.2 million bales in 2024, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Cotton acreage in Mississippi dropped from about 520,000 in 2024 to about 330,000 this year, the USDA reports.

The decline in production could have impacts on the 33 cotton gins that are still in operation across the state of Mississippi, the USDA’s 2024 Cotton Ginnings Report said. A cotton gin separates the seeds from cotton fibers, which are then baled for production and spun into yarn or thread for use in clothing and other fabrics.

The shift in production comes after the wettest May in a decade in the Golden Triangle made production more difficult for farmers this year, especially with rising production costs and lower international demand for cotton.

Behind soybeans, cotton tends to compete with corn each year as the second largest crop in Mississippi. But with increased production from countries like Brazil, the cotton market has become more competitive and difficult for farmers in the United States, Mississippi State University Extension Service Agricultural Economist Will Maples said.

The increased rainfall compounded with the already difficult market for cotton, raising issues for other farmers planning on planting cotton in the typical summer window, Brian Pieralisi, a cotton specialist with MSU Extension Service told The Dispatch.

“It was just too wet, which wouldn’t hold the equipment in the field, which just kept the farmers out of the field,” he said. “And cotton is pretty slow starting out like it grows really slow for the first 30 or 40 days. So it just really gets behind quick.”

With fewer acres available for planting this year, local farmers like Brignac were left this season to decide whether cotton was worth planting at all, especially with corn prices increasing, Pieralisi said.

Kernels of success

The USDA in July projected corn to sell at $4.29 a bushel while cotton was about 64 cents a pound, according to USDA. Corn prices were up about 6 cents a bushel while cotton declined about 22 cents a pound from July 2024. Mississippi farmers planted about 920,000 acres of corn this year, about a 88% increase over last year, according to the USDA.

Part of the reason for the uptick in corn production this year was because it was projected to be a more profitable option, Maples said

“Back in the spring … when people were working on their budgets and what to pencil out, corn at least it was break even to not losing as much as cotton,” Maples said. “Basically the economics on the corn side were just a little bit better.”

Corn and cotton also tend to work well in rotation in the same soil, making it an easy shift for farmers amid falling cotton production.

“By and large, I would say that a lot of the acres between corn and cotton tend to fluctuate in tandem,” Pieralisi said. “… I would say those two numbers can significantly influence each other.”

While profits have gotten tighter for Brignac’s farm over the last few years, he would have still been breaking even after production costs even if he had intended to scale up corn production coming into the season.

While the numbers may side with corn for short term revenue, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s what’s best for the land, which is why Brignac said he tries to rotate an even split between cotton and corn to maintain rich soil and to not be entirely tied to the market of one crop.

“There are a few fields that we plant multi-year cotton and occasional corn, just due to the nature of the field itself,” Brignac said. “… We have a gin in Noxubee County, and … that gin needs cotton to stay running, and so even though there may have been a little bit of a money swing, if you did everything just right, to make a little bit more money on corn, we still have to support that gin if we want to be able to continue to plant cotton.”

Brignac said that generally his farmland has had good yields on cotton and he knew that the Bogue Chitto Gin Inc. in Macon would need his farmland’s support this year, which was a “major factor” in why he even planted cotton this year.

Slim pickings this season

Aaron Litwiller, general manager for Bogue Chitto Gin Inc., said that the gin is expecting a drop of between 30,000 to 35,000 bales of cotton this year, which will impact the gin’s operations but not as much as it will for other smaller gins in the area.

“We’ve tried not to worry ourselves with things we can’t control,” Litwiller said. “But I think the reality is that if all things (are) the same as today, that number that we’re seeing this year could be a reality for next year in planting intentions.”

Litwiller said the concern for the gin is now rooted in whether cotton production falls in the future after such a low turnout this year.

Growing production costs and continued dropping prices for most land crops have caused a squeeze on many farmers, Pieralisi said, not only in Mississippi but across the country.

“The cotton industry needs support from consumers and anyone else who sees the value of cotton,” Pieralisi said. “… (Increasing) the demand is the only thing that can really save it, because if farmers get out of growing cotton then it could slowly fade away.”

Brignac said he’s felt the squeeze in profits over the last few years, but he has hope that the demand for cotton can pick back up and help aid other farmers like himself.

“We need the demand to increase,” Brignac said. “And competition is stiff, and so we have other countries that we’re competing against and right now we’re not winning that battle.”