As Arkansas Cotton Acres Rebound, so do Gin Numbers

Jun 20, 2018

By Mary Hightower

NASS: 33 active gins in Arkansas in 2017, up 2 from previous year
Ginned bales rose 31 percent from 2016

The number of active cotton gins in Arkansas rose to 33 in 2017, paralleling an increase in cotton acres, according to statistics from the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

“With a recovery in cotton acres the last couple of years, Arkansas is also seeing some gins come back to life,” said Scott Stiles, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. “In 2017 we saw two more gins operate than in 2016, one each in Craighead and Lee counties.”

Arkansas farmers planted 445,000 acres of cotton in 2017, up from 380,000 in 2016. Cotton acres have been in slow decline since 2000, with the exception of 2006, when growers planted 1.17 million acres.

Cotton gin and acreage trends from 2000-2017.

Stiles also said the NASS numbers pegged another increase: “The trend toward much larger and higher volume gins is certainly continuing. A gin is definitely a massive investment in equipment that requires a lot of volume to make the numbers work.”

Of the 33 operating gins in 2017, 23 of them ginned 20,000 bales or more. In 2016, only 17 gins handled the same volumes.

Craighead and Mississippi counties had the largest number of working gins in 2017, each with seven. Ashley County had four, St. Francis had three, and Lee and Poinsett counties each had two. Clay, Chicot, Crittenden, Desha, Greene, Lincoln, Monroe and Philipps counties each had one.

However, low cottonseed prices may put the brakes on growth, Stiles said.

“We may find in 2018 that even increasing cotton acreage may not be enough to sustain gin numbers in the state,” he said.

“From discussions at our winter production meetings I did hear of at least one gin that did not plan to operate this fall,” Stiles said. “They cited low cotton seed prices as the reason. Earlier this year cotton seed prices fell to decade lows. Revenue from seed sales is the lifeblood for gins.”

Cottonseed prices spiked in June 2014 at $460 a ton and sank to $130 per ton in November 2017.

Source: uaex.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”