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Texas’ Cotton Industry Is Facing Its Worst Harvest In Years — Costing The State More Than $2 Billion

Texas’ Cotton Industry Is Facing Its Worst Harvest In Years — Costing The State More Than $2 Billion

By Jayme Lozano

Cotton production has been decimated by drought and extreme heat this year, costing Texas High Plains farmers and other agricultural industries at least $2 billion, according to one estimate.

“There’s just not much crop out there,” said Brad Heffington, a cotton farmer in Littlefield. “A lot of cotton burned up and a lot of it never even made it up to begin with.”

Heffington’s farm is about 40 miles northwest of Lubbock in the state’s High Plains, an area that stretches from Lubbock to the tip of Panhandle and covers 42 counties.

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Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way



Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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