BYMARVIN TESSNEERThe Las Cruces Bulletin

About 40 years ago when cotton was king, jets of steam shot up from the Southwest Irrigated Cotton Growers (SWIG) warehouse on Compress Road where steam-compressed cotton bales were loaded into rail freight cars standing on a spur line.

But the Mesilla Valley cotton industry, which provides jobs and puts money into the economy by paying for services and equipment and supplies, is stagnating.

The compress was shut down several years ago, and there are no more steam jets. The former SWIG office, just around the corner on Haynes Avenue, is closed. Weeds are growing between the freight car spur rails and a few tractor-trailers are hauling cotton bales from the old warehouse.

When cotton was king, the Mesilla Valley had about 15 neighborhood cotton gins. Now, the valley has one operating gin, Mesa Farmers Co-op Gin near Vado, N.M., which was opened in 1991 and incorporated the former Santo Tomas, Chamberino and Anthony co-op gins.

Mesa Farmers Gin expects to process 25,000 bales of upland and Pima – the extra fine and strong fiber variety – this year, compared with 33,630 bales last year. The production in 2007 was 44,000 bales and in 2006 it was 47,000 bales, a gin record, manager Alberto Pando said.

Although production is down, the fiber quality and yield per acre has improved.

“Cotton likes heat and this summer we had lots of hot days and nights,” Pando said. “Last summer we didn’t have the heat, we had some rain and we only averaged a little more than two bales per acre.

“And at the end of last year, upland had dropped to the 40-cents a pound range, and at those prices farmers can’t afford to grow cotton. Prices are a little better this year, and if we get three bales an acre this year, we’ll be in pretty good shape.”

Pando started out as a helper in 1982 at the old Chamberino gin. He has been with Mesa Farmers since it opened and has seen a lot of changes, he said.

Mesa Farmers is a combination gin that processes both varieties, upland, with its saw gin, and Pima, with its roller gin. Its “press unit,” where the bales are finished, compresses them into UD (uniform density), an improvement from the old SWIG steam compress.

Mesa Farmers can turn out about 30 bales an hour.

“When I was working at the Chamberino gin, we averaged five bales an hour,” Pando said.

In the last six years, the gin has added a module feeder that moves cotton slowly on rollers into a machine that transfers the cotton lint and seed into the gin. Growers pack their cotton into field modules, which contain 17 bales of cotton lint, and it takes half an hour for the feeder to transfer the volume of one module into the gin. Another improvement is the control room, where ginners can monitor the different operations with TV monitoring stations.

A ginning byproduct is cotton seed, which the gin sells to dairies as a high-protein feed supplement.

Mesa Farmers handles cotton from 9,600 acres for co-op members in Doña Ana, Luna and Sierra counties.

“We’re moving some modules for 100 miles, from Deming, Columbus and La Chepa, a town west of Columbus,” Pando said.

The Mesa Farmers Co-op board officers are Ramon “Dosi” Alvarez, Bob Sloan, Billy Holbrook, Willie Hernandez, Dave Koenig, Dino Cervantes, Luis Holguin, Hector Franco, Carl Moore, Keith Deputy and Eugene Watson.

Holbrook, who farms near Mesquite, said he had cut his cotton acreage from about 180 last season to 80 of upland and Pima.

“I’m growing more corn silage for dairies and alfalfa where there is more profit,” Holbrook said. “There’s not much profit in cotton, not at the prices they’re offering at this time.”

He has finished ginning his upland picking at the Mesa Farmers Co-op gin. The high August temperatures helped his production, and his upland yields were three bales per acre, he reported.

His Pima yields were a little down on the first picking, but after the August heat boost, he expects them to increase.

Sloan of San Miguel said he has reduced his cotton acreage from about 1,000 acres to 300.

“With the heat we had and not a lot of rain, the cotton quality is good. That’s the good news,” he said. “But it’shard to make a living growing cotton at the prices we’re getting. We hope that the prices go up next year so we can go back to cotton.”

The cotton acreage for upland and Pima varieties in western New Mexico is 9,600, compared to 12,500 last year. About seven years ago, cotton growers in the Upper Rio Grande Valley and western New Mexico harvested 30,000 acres, Calcot Cotton field representative Jack Langenegger reported.

Calcot took over the former SWIG operation on Oct. 1, 2006. David Hand was named manager at the old SWIG office on Hayner, but he retired in September. Langenegger, who works out of Artesia, has been named spokesman.

The reasons that he gave for acreage decrease are familiar, a depressed market and an oversupply on the world-wide market.

“Compared with what farmers could get for corn and alfalfa, cotton is relatively cheap,” Langenegger said. “They can make more money growing other crops.”

The latest cotton market prices were 62 to 63 cents per pound for upland and about $1 a pound for Pima.

“Those aren’t particularly good prices,” he said.

As of Aug. 1, the market had an oversupply of 61 million bales from China, India and Uzbekistan, a former Soviet Union province.

Rows of cotton modules are inspected by Mesa Farmers Co-op manager Alberto Pando.

Cotton farmers pack the cotton lint and seed into the modules in the field so they can be held until they are processed.

MARVIN TEssNEER The Las Cruces Bulletin