Gary Oldham Interview, Part 1 of 2

DT: My name is David Todd. Its October 9, 2002 and I'm here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. And we have the good fortune to be in Samnorwood, Texas with Gary Oldham whose an organic cotton farmer in this area and he also does some diversified organic work in other crops.

And he's also been involved with selling a whole slew of finished products made from his organic cotton. I just want to thank him for talking about his work and his life.

GO: We have been in the business here for all my life. I live in a home that my grandfather built in the 20s and I was raised there and have been there forty-seven of my fifty something years and have just always been a part of this. Our family started out and the earliest records we have is, I think, the first census taken in the country was 1790.

And the record shows that the family was in North Carolina and through the years they moved into Tennessee. And then from Tennessee came to Texas in about 1870 after Civil War in, in the area around Montague, Montague County. And from there, they came to the Samnorwood community or Dozier community probably around the early 1900s.

I don't have a real clear date on that. But that was kind of the time the county was being opened up and there was land available, cheap land. And, and throughout our history we've always been farmers and cotton farmers. And its just the way I guess the way of life to those days. Cotton farming was something that was good for this area, kind of a dry land crop.

And some markets have always been up and down but family they well they were pretty well established through the 20s and then they had some pretty rough times during the Depression.

Actually lost everything they owned and had to leave and then come back and reestablish and actually wound up buying back the same land that we lost from the bank. And, and some of that land is what we still, still farm today and, and raise our organic crops. Andand

DT: Can you tell us about what it was like raising cotton in those early days, say before World War II?

GO: Yes. Back from the stories I hear from, heard from my parents, my uncles and when the county opened up people came and of course this was all grassland, people broke, broke that land out. And it was fertile and cotton grew well and they made, they made some money. And then I think the land wore out fairly quickly because of this area of the land is kind of shallow.

But you had back then you had families living, basically, on every hundred and sixty acres. The family could support, support themselves on that small acreage. And in, in our, in our part of the world were not just flat all farming land.

So a hundred and sixty acres would probably have maybe a hundred acres of cultivation and some of that would be probably on the verge of not being something you should farm but, but they farmed it.

And then you would have some grassland so they would have some livestock and, and the cotton as well. But they could raise, raise their families on that small acreage and then when the Depression came along which was coincided with drought and a lot of people left. And so probably you know, the biggest change from the 30s till after World War II was, was maybe starting to see less people in the area and, and less and less cotton farming after that time, too.

I think there were about twenty something thousand people that lived in this county prior to the 30s. And today there's less than three thousand. So its just kind of been an, an exodus from that time.

DT: Did a lot of these people work on the farm or did you have a good deal of equipment back in the 20s and 30s?

GO: Most, mostly back then it wasn't here wasn't there weren't many tractors but their, everyone farmed with teams and had large families. So they all worked the fields (inaudible) cultivated with hoe and basically and but the planning was done with, with a team, maybe two or four mules, which you know, farming eighty acres with that kind of method, that, that would be just about probably all you could do.

DT: Aside from the cotton you were raising were there other crops that you were also cultivating?

GO: Before or are you talking about in the early days?

DT: Back in the 20s and 30s, were they pretty diversified farms?

GO: I think yes, I think people raised quite a bit of grain crops you know, to feed their animals, of course, but cotton was mainly the cash crop; something that they would have that they could sell and have money to live on. But, they would, they would, of course, have gardens, but we raised a lot of grain in this area and cane, and you know, they would have there were some meals where they would squeeze the cane and get some sugar.

In fact, one of the places that we own now that there was one of those way back then, I'm told. But, but, yeah they were diversified. A lot of livestock, pigs, cattle, of course, chickens and all the things that a person needed toto get by. But I would say cotton for our area has always kind of been the main crop.

DT: And for cash, were most of the families able to sustain themselves, feed themselves from what they grew on their place?

GO: Yes. Yes. It was mostly, the way I understand it, it was mostly that way. You know, they would grow and put things up and kill hogs and beef, best preserve those the best they could for and try to just live that way. So, so its why, you know, we had so many more people then. I just took more people to live that kind of lifestyle.

DT: And this is mostly dry land agriculture, I guess, no?

GO: Yes. It was always dry land up until after the war when they started doing a little irrigation. But our area the Indians lived here and they were farmers before us. And we have a lot of things that we've found on our property and its some, I guess some of the earliest dating that I've had done on is eleven hundred.

But they were simple people, simple farmers. But, but dry land anyway the point I was going to make is they named this area the greenbelt is our translation. I don't know what it was then. But there's kind of an area on this side of the panhandle that, that, I guess, maybe gets a little bit more rain than we do, than you do out west, west of here.

So it's, it' s through the years its pretty decent dry land farming especially for cotton which is a, is a crop that's a little more tolerant than wheat and so its, you know, people basically lived counting on the rain.

DT: Can you tell about when the rain didn't come during the 30s? What have you heard about the drought and the dustbowl from those days?

GO: Yeah, well Hoover and the Republicans caused the drought. Those are some of the things you hear. No, this, this area is always had periods of drought and, and just studying the history, I think, there was a time even back around the turn of the century where they, they had a period of drought.

But then when the 30s came along, we had, I guess there was probably five or six years of, of drought. And you know, coupled with the economy and which, you know, made things worse and caused people to, you know, wonder if you really could live here and sustain life dry land farming. But most everyone here, I guess, suffered greatly in that time.

And a lot of people lost what they had and left, some were able to stay. But after, after that people started looking into, to irrigation.

DT: Have you heard any stories of what the Dust Bowl looked like when you had these dust storms, dirt storms, sand storms?

GO: Yes, our area was not, was not like a lot of stories that you here up on, on the plains. Were kind of rolling plains here. So our land is not just a hundred percent cultivation. We have a lot of grassland, which kind of kept from being a lot of the pictures you've seen and the stories you've heard.

But I've still, I've heard stories of the, the day in April, I forget the year when the cloud rolled in from the north and it, it became as dark as night here at noon. But that dust, you know, was coming from somewhere else. It didn't originate here. But, but you know how people just talk about, of course, the old houses then, you know, weren't real well made and dirt was just coming in the house.

And the, the home that I live in, which was built before, it was built in the 20s, we it was probably twenty years ago we decided to insulate, insulate. And we went up in there and it had probably a five-inch thick layer of just fine dust. And, and I, I wondered if some of that wasn't, you know, from those days, you know.

It possibly could have been. So, but you know the people that lived through that time, it was, they were certainly, it was something they didn't forget.

DT: I guess toward the end of the 30s and into the 40s the rains returned and I understand that also agriculture changed as well. There's more machinery, more fuels that you could use. Can you talk about how agriculture in general and cotton farming in particular changed in the post war years from your own experience or maybe your parents?

GO: Yes. Well Ill speak from, from what I know of, of from my parents. Like I said during the Depression, they lost their land and they went to Phoenix and lived out there for several years and worked in the cotton fields out there for someone else in, in feed line industry and other things.

And, and when my dad came back, I think it was probably 35, maybe 36 when they left, farming was basically teams and, and not much machinery, like you said. When he came back, he started buying some land and, and was able to get some mechanization and then the war

came along and they actually they had some tractors, quite a few tractors here before the war, but then during the war, like, I had a, I have a cousin that still farms here that's quite a bit older than I am but he worked for my dad, and he had, dad had a brand new tractor and cousin ran it off into a ditch and broke the axle. And this was right during the war.

Well, they just had to let it sit because they couldn't get parts until after the war. So it was like four or five years before they could get the tractor that tractor back. But then after the war, of course we had, I guess had the industry and you know, life was good, economy was good, and so farming really boomed.

And, and mechanization of farming really stepped up and, and most people there were less people farming more land. You know, like we said before the 30s, maybe a family lived on a hundred and sixty acres. That kind of changed during the Depression. And the people that came back probably a typical farm beginning of World War II in our area maybe would be four, five hundred acres.

And and its you know, its increased since then. But, but the machinery part, you know, picked up a lot where you were able to farm a lot. I, I, I remember my granddad the place I lived on is a couple hundred acres and it was all cultivation at one time. And he had, he had I think fourteen mules and he said he could drag a harrow which is probably the fastest and simplest thing that you could do.

He could plow that place in eight days and he thought that he was really getting over it. And, of course, today there are tractors that can do that, you know, easily, in ain a day. You know, I cant with, with our equipment but probably a couple of days. But, but big change, you know.

DT: Did the implements change too?

GO: Yes. You, you talking about, maybe, for conservation purposes or just general? The, the methods like in cotton farming, they had a one of the tools was called a go-devil which is a kind of a cultivator. And, and they had those that they pulled behind a team. We still have some of those but then we still use that same plow behind a tractor.

And, and I still use it today in, in organic farming. No one else does that anymore. But, but, but you had a lot of different machines for sub soiling. You know, as you had a tractor you were able to have more power to plow the land deeper and which would allow the, the rain toto soak in and get more moisture in the in your ground and break up your hard pan.

So, you know, there's a lot of changes of course to harvesting still hand harvested up until the late 50s in our area. But harvesting equipment was coming along.

DT: And what about some of the herbicides and insecticides? Did you start seeing those in the 50s, maybe?

GO: I think probably, I don't think the earliest recollection I have in my family was probably very late 50s into the 60s before we started using much of that kind of thing. Of course, DDT was something that people used back then. And but I don't we didn't use I don't think we used anything in the 40s and probably at least half of the 50s. Of course, I was very young then. But, but our, our history with the chemicals really has been pretty short because I began doing what I'm doing in the 80s, basically.

DT: Is it dry enough and cool enough most of the year that you don't have the insects that you might have farther south?

GO: We have a little different situation here. The boll weevil is, is throughout the years it's, he's, he's been bad here sometimes and sometimes not, because of the climate. Normally we're, you know, we have cold enough winters that, that you take care of some of the insects. But we, we go through periods were we don't experience much of that. And we've had that here in the last six or seven years where we haven't had cold enough winters to, to kill over wintering insects. And but I would say we have less problems, definitely, than they do south of us.

DT: What were peoples attitudes when some of these new chemicals were introduced? Was it a lot excitement or was it sort of indifferent?

GO: I think mostly people were always, you know, excited about having something toto help, help them out. You know, there are insects, I know, can completely wipe you out. And we've experienced that, and we had a lot of I know, with my father had a lot of trouble with worms different times.

Not every year, maybe, but, but they were, you know, they were glad to have something to kill, to kill those, you know, to preserve their livelihood, basically. Because if you lost your crop, you know, that was just it. So, so I would think they welcomed, they welcomed the chemical technology.

DT: For those who aren't in farming, can you sort of describe what it would be like to go out one day and see an infestation and see the progress of it through your field?

GO: Well, generally of course, people, I guess, have learned more through the years about how to watch and monitor and know what they're looking for. A lot of times when you see it, your, it's almost too late. And there's the boll weevil is very hard to kill. Even with, even with the harshest chemical.

And same way with the worm because of the way they burrow inside and its hard to get something to them to kill them. But it's kind, kind of a sickening feeling to see to see your crop being destroyed by pests.

DT: One other change that was happening in the post-war era was that people started irrigating more, as I understand it. Is that fair to say? Did that happen around here?

GO: Yes and my dad was one of the first to do irrigating here in our county. And I think he started out by just kind of damming up a little creek and pumping some of that water out onto a small acreage. And then in, I believe it was 51, he drilled an irrigation well. It was one of the first wells in this county.

Maybe not the first, but, but it might have been. I don't know. There was, I know, there was an article about him in some magazine back then, but, but they, you know, started wanting a way to have a little, maybe a little insurance, I guess you'd say. And of course, fuel was cheap back then. And we still had a, a good labor source for you know, irrigation required quite a bit of labor the way they did it then.

DT: How did they do it then?

GO: Well, we had just what they call ground line pipe, which is thirty-foot sections of aluminum pipe with a sprinkler head. And you would twice a day you'd go and carry those over sixty feet, put them, take them apart, carry them over, put them back together, you know, run your water. And, and it was something you did, from generally, late June till late August.

And it was you'd wade in mud up to your knees and carrying these pipe, getting up very early in the morning to do it. It was a real character builder. But that, we our, our land here is not real level so there wasn't a lot of row, row watering which, you know, is a lot easier kind of an irrigation. But so the sprinkler irrigation with the ground line was basically the way it was done.

DT: Did you use center pivot irrigation?

GO: Center pivots didn't come in until let's see, I think we bought we bought one in 1982. So, when I, when I left to go to college in the late 60s, we were still doing carrying it by hand. And you know, when I came back during the time I was going to college and worked briefly in, in the industry I was educated in, they went to what they call a side roll irrigation, which is a, it's still a pipe with the sprinklers but they're on wheels and they have a little hydraulic unit in the middle that you start up the little motor and it, it rolls and moves its, moves itself that way.

And then center pivots came in, I think they had some probably in the 70s but we didn't we didn't get into that till 82.

DT: I suppose another thing that changed since the pre-war days is the focus on one crop. Is that true? Do you think you see more of a monoculture operation in post-war days rather than more diversified like in the early days?

GO: Yes, I think so. And a lot, there's a lot of things involved in, in that. And a lot of it has to do with the farm programs. Cotton is a, was a program that of course, during the Roosevelt years when they came out with a lot of our farm subsidy programs that help people get through. Cotton was one that was, it had good benefits.

And, plus, you know, being good for this area people would farm the cotton and so then it got into you know, sometimes you couldn't your banker wouldn't loan you money to farm unless you were going to farm cotton. Even though, maybe, cotton price wasn't very good, you still had maybe the subsidy to go along with it.

So, so a lot of things involved in, in, in having maybe one crop over the other and I would say more of it was, would be due to government policies and, and your financial backers. And, and then you were getting into a time there, too, where your original generation were retiring so they were renting their land to the next generation.

And, and you know, cotton is what we made it on, so by golly, you're going to plant cotton, you know, on my land if you're going to farm my land. So, you know, you had, you had a lot of that too. So there's a lot a farmer is not a hundred percent free in his decisions on what he plants, you know. We all have somebody to answer to.

DT: Sometime during the 80s, I understand that you started to have some skepticism about the conventional way of raising cotton and started looking for some alternatives. Can you help explain how you started to change and what it was about the conventional way of raising cotton that gave you pause?

GO: Well, I'll back up a little bit. I was, when I left, you know, I didn't what to come back to farm and have anything to do with it, didn't what to move any of those irrigation pipe. So, I went to school at Texas AandM, and received a Masters Degree in Aerospace engineering and worked in that industry a short while.

And in the meantime, my mother had some sickness, and, and I needed to come back to the farm. So, we came back in 76, I believe it was, is when I came back and took, took it over on my own. Well, we were still, you know, kind of doing things the way they were done, and it was just, just kind of spinning your wheels, you know, fighting, fighting pests and weeds.

And the land was worn out I felt like because, it's just you know been the same crops for so many years. And I just I think it was in 81, I remember walking out into the cotton field and the crop was struggling to come up and it shouldn't been having any trouble but because of the way the soil was and I had a certain weed problem there that was, that was kind of made it sick.

And I just, I just thought then, you know, I'm going, I'm going to do whatever I need to do to change this, you know, wh, whatever it means. If, if I have to change everything completely and, and cost me for a while and, you know, I'm going to do that because I was at a point where I wasn't doing any good at it anyway because our crops just weren't making what they should, should make.

And there's, there's a Scripture verse, in Ecclesiastes that says everyone benefits from the increase of the land, even the king. So feel like what's good for the land is good for man. And I decided then to put our crop, put our land into some crops that would build it up. So I started planting alfalfa.

And I had no idea of anything about alfalfa. How you could sell it. How you could even make a living off of it. But through the 80s, I got into the alfalfa business, got into a good hay business. And actually, it was one of the best things I ever had going in agriculture. And it was a good market and it was a market that was not a world market because you sold hay to somebody that was raising horses.

And, you know, they're and your competitors you didn't have world competitors because you cant ship hay from China to so, so that crop was good and it was good for the land. And during that time we just completely quit using any kind of fertilizers or, or herbicides or anything. So I, I learned to kind of take care of that crop.

Like, if we had pest problems, instead of spraying the pests, wed just go cut the hay. And maybe it would be a little early, but you'd still do away with the infestation of the worm, so. So, that, that worked and was really going real well. And then the alfalfa, you plant it and it lasts about six or seven years and then you have to rotate it out.

So at that time it was time to start rotating some of that land out of alfalfa. And, of course, we knew that, you know, that cotton following alfalfa is great because its fertile and you've cleaned up the, the weed problems. And just about that time is when the Texas Department of Agriculture had started an organic certification program and there was talk of organic cotton in the markets for organic cotton.

So, so we kind of, basically, began back in the 80s trying to, to make the switch. And then it just it made a real, made a real easy flow into the, into the organic cotton after we cleaned up the land with the alfalfa, so.

DT: Mr. Oldham, I was hoping you could go back and give us a little bit more detail about what you saw and thought in the early 80s when you decided that you needed to change your practices and maybe go towards alfalfa and try to restore the land so that you could get into a more sustainable kind of farming.

GO: Well, I think generally the thinking of farming, back in those days, is that you could accomplish anything with the chemicals. You could, you know, accomplish the fertility level that you need to. And certainly people do. Maybe, maybe they're a little better at it than I was.

But, but the problems that I saw was that, um, my land had a lot of problems with, with weeds that were hard to control. Johnson grass at that time was hard to control. Now, now they have a way of doing it pretty good. And we had another weed called, we, well, we call them horse nettles, silver nightshades.

And those usually appear when your land is needing something. And, and I was having a lot of that. And when we would plant our crop, and maybe get a little bit of rain before the crop comes up, the soil would get very hard, of course, cotton comes up like a bean with a, with its neck crooked, so if it pushes very hard it basically breaks its neck and can't come out of the soil.

Not like a grass plant or something. So, we were having a lot of trouble with that which indicates that you have a low organic matter in your soil. And that with and we did irrigate. We irrigated a lot. And you know, it would, basically the crop would just, you couldn't put enough water. I mean, you had to keep it constant.

And that had a lot to do with the with the, I think, the organic matter in the, in the soil. But just having the same crop year after year after year you have, you have of course, insect build up because they, they winter there and that's just their lifecycle. You don't break it up and the same way with the weeds.

But, I think probably the, the weeds and just the general, all general getting the crops off to a good start and, and being able to produce a lot of fruit, I could see that it was just really lacking. And felt like we just needed to just to start all over and rest the land or do something. Some of that land had had cotton for probably since it was broke out, broken out from grass back in the tens, teens.

DT: Was any of the concern, not so much for the soil for the crop, but for you and your family and exposure to the chemicals?

GO: Yeah. Yes, that certainly always worrisome. And I, and I, of course, grew up there in the sixties. And, you know, its when oh, I guess, we were really becoming more aware of things in the environment. And, and having lived in a different part of the state, you know, got exposed to some of that.

And, and its just you know, really, I like to think that were better off doing things, using common sense. People don't use common sense a lot of times today. But, you know, that's one thing that is just really common sense. You know, you don't want to be in a chemical. You don't want you wouldn't want your children making mud pies out there and eating the mud pies.

And so, so it was really our family and the way I farmed, I never was, I always looked how to limit the chemical use; but even though we did use a lot of it. But, you know, a lot of that was because of fear of it, but also but also financial. I mean its you know, its expensive thing toto do. There's a lot of a lot of people that advise you like your crop consultant that's looking for bugs.

You know, if you did what they wanted you to do, you'd, you'd spray the crop every week and it would cost you a small fortune. And then I've, I've had neighbors that they did that and at the end the guy said, Well, you've lost it. Its too bad, you know. You spent this hundred dollars an acre. So, so that's not always effective. You know, a lot of that is timing.

But, but you know, certainly, we, I didn't like being around the chemicals and, and just would like to have a better way the way you know, actually the way my dad and granddad did before, before they came along with these things. You know, they, they were able to farm without chemicals.

DT: Can you give us an idea of the scale of chemical use in conventional cotton farming?

GO: Yes. We have a, we have a, we haven't talked about the T-shirt business yet. But, we have a thing that when we changed from conventional to organic, we eliminated four ounces of concentrated chemicals per eight ounce T-shirt. So, in other words to raise a bale of cotton which is five hundred pounds you're going to be using about two hundred and fifty pounds of chemicals.

Or at least that is on my farm, my calculations. Of course, higher yields, you know, make those figures different. But, but most of that comes in, in the form of your fertilizers which is, you know, use a lot of pounds of fertilizers. And the, I lost my train of thought there, David.

DT: You were saying you use a lot of fertilizers and other chemicals to produce a pound or bale of cotton in a conventional form?

GO: Yes. Okay. I was, I was, we were talking about how they did it now. Its changed, I mean, its changed now some, but. But in, in the 70s and 80s there, you would use a herbicide that you'd pre plant and put down to kill emerging weeds and, of course, your fertilizers. And then there would be some sprays that you would put on the early cotton to take care of the thrips and those kinds of pests.

And then sometimes through the year you might want to fertilize again and then you would get into your other spraying as the crop progressed for, for worms or weevils. And then when it come time to harvest, if you wanted to get it out early and avoid wet weather, you'd put a defoliant on to, to kill it and get it, to get it out.

Today that's changed even more with, with some of the genetic developments in the crops where they've made a crop that is not damaged by chemical roundup, which a roundup would kill anything, which is growing. So, so a farmer, now, puts down, he does the pre plant herbicide but then, also, when the crops young, they'll spray over the top with the roundup, which will kill weeds and then they could do that again.

And but, but the seed for that is, is very expensive, too. So that's, that's a big cost.

DT: So, in conventional Ag, how many times do you think a typical farmer can be back out into his field applyingand

GO: Applying chemicals? I would say if you, if you look at, today, the people that are not dry land farmers, but the people that are irrigated shooting for top yields, you have a, you have a pre plant, you have a chemical with the herb, I mean, you have a chemical that you apply with the seed when you're planting.

Then you do a roundup spray. You probably do that twice. Then you, and then you sometimes maybe have an early bug spray, which there's five applications, another boost of fertilizer or, or two, a lot of that's injected through, through irrigation. And then depending on your insect troubles, you might have four applications there and then maybe a defoliant.

So, and then also they have a growth regulator that they, that I like to use. So put water on to make a crop grow big, put picks on it to make it stay small, you know. So its probably ten, eleven shots of, of applications. And, and that's, it's very expensive. The typically what some of those your roundup applications are about ten dollars.

Your, your herbicide, pre plant herbicide is probably, um, a little less than ten, just the seed costs on the roundup ready, is about thirty dollars an acre, which is also is a, is almost of those have a bug resistant variety, too, that you're paying for part of that. So that's about thirty dollars over what your normal seed would cost.

And then your defoliant is about twenty dollars an acre, your fertilizer is, is probably thirty, forty dollars an acre. The insect sprays, probably ten dollars an application. So, you know, you're getting up there, hundred and fifty, two hundred dollars just in those costs per acre. So, what that does, I mean, you know, that's fine if you, if you make a big yield and a big crop.

But if you have a bad year and something else goes wrong, like you have an early freeze or hail or, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of things that can go wrong with a cotton crop. So then, you know, then you're, you're exposed. And that's, that's the tough part about the farming, is you have a lot of money invested there and, you know, it might not turn out.

DT: You've added up some of the expenses if a typical cotton farmer went to market and had a good yield what might he or she get?

GO: Well the irrigated, the established irrigated yield in our county is close to nine hundred pounds per acre. People and the conventional price today for cotton is the loan price, which is about fifty cents. So you're looking at four hundred and fifty dollars an acre. You know, they have, if you can, if you have all your costs in there, you know, that's that's real marginal.

Of course, people like to make, there's a lot of cotton being made this year; three bales to the acre, which you know, will work a little better. But, but typically, irrigated cotton, you know, needs to make two bales to the acre. And that's back in the late 70s, you know, you were hoping that you'd make a bale to acre irrigated.

So, so, I guess, the needthe need for making more, plus, you know, that maybe a little better genetics on cotton crops, earlier maturing have helped increase the yield some. But and, and probably the chemical maintenance maybe has helped those people establish that. Now, I don't know that, that it has been to me, I don't think that you're necessarily getting a, a, a good return on your money.

I think its more swapping dollars. I mean, you spend two hundred, yeah, you're making twice as much cotton but, you know, you're not making any more money. And its something were looking at; we've, is irrigation costs. You know, irrigation costs have gone up, where its, you know, it's, it's a terrible expense.

Back when my dad started it was fuel was cheap, labor was cheap, you know, it was cheap. And I'm really trying to get away from irrigation and trying to get back to dry land, which is you know, irrigation is a pretty good insurance on a dry year but if you can establish yourself where you could make, you know, a dry land crop, I'm not sure that the return maybe, somewhere in there, it might be a better deal.

DT: Where is the expense in the irrigation? Is it just the fuel for running these pumps? Or is it the fact that the aquifer is lower that it used to be and there's more lift cost? Or is the labor of moving it high?

GO: Well, the of course largest cost now is, is equipment. You know back when I was talking about moving the hand move pipe. You know, the pipe was that was cheap. Now if you're looking at a center pivot, you're looking at fifty, sixty thousand dollar investment for a hundred and sixty acres of land or, or a hundred and thirty acres of land.

So, so pretty large amount per acre there just on that. Okay, well the well, now. It costs so much for the pump, for the drilling; it cost about twenty thousand dollars to put in a well. And then, that's, that's just your, you know, your equipment. Of course fuel prices now are, are expensive. So it costs, our, our water here is, is relatively shallow.

When you talk about the aquifer on the plains were kind of in a different situation. Our water, we don't lift it that high. But still the, the fuel cost is, you know, its expensive. But just paying for the equipment and this equipment, about the time you get it paid for its worn out.

So you, so you, really, you can just figure that cost is just a yearly cost of what, what oh, you could say sixty, seventy thousand dollars for a hundred and thirty acres. You're just going to be, basically, making that payment forever because, you know, by the time you pay it, its time to replace it.

So that's to me, that's the expense is the equipment. The fuel the fuel is not, not that bad when you compare that. Of course, then you have a motor to take care of, you know, to pump to, to pump the water. It, it wears out, lots of moving parts.

DT: Well, it sounds like there's lots of input for conventional cotton farm. I mean, from the tractor to the implements to the irrigation equipment, to the seed, to the fuel and all the chemicals. Do you find that the typical cotton farmer is sort of surrounded by numerous salesmen that are trying to push a certain technology, a certain product, promoting a certain way of farming?

GO: Yes. You know, its you see, you see that a lot in our industry. That like most of your suppliers, of the chemicals or the seed or whatever, they have programs where, you know, they feed you and bring you down there and show you stuff. And, and it's, i'ts not like a high-pressure type sales, but, but people are drawn to it.

And you know, I, I, I don't want to crit I hate to say anything. I don't want to be critical at all of anyone because on a large, on a large scale there's not really any other way of doing it but, but the way that people are doing it. By just for instance, the roundup ready cotton. That just that deal just kills me, really.

Because it costs a hundred and seventy-nine dollars for a bag of cottonseed. Now I bought cottonseed this year to plant my crop with for nine dollars, just regular seed. Hundred seventy-nine dollars. Well, this is this is supposedly is going to help you with keeping your weeds down and its going to have a boll worm resistant gene in, in the cotton.

So, that bag of seed will plant about five acres of cotton. So you have about thirty-five dollars an acre there in that seed to take care of your weed control. Plus you have to spread the roundup twice, which is twenty more dollars. Plus you put down the herbicide to start with, which is ten. So you spend about sixty-five or seventy dollars on your weed control.

And then I would say, almost every year, they still have to hoe the crop a little bit because there's weeds that escape. Well, this year on our organic crop, we, we didn't have any of that expense. The hoeing is the worst expense in organic. And I had one field that, that II knew didn't need to be in cotton this year but II had to because of some other reasons.

But it was it was foul. And I spent fifty dollars an acre on that one field. Well, my other field I just spent about twenty on weed control. So, so, I, you know, I,I don't see, I think people are kind of duped by, by these companies thinking you have to have this great technology, you know when, when really, I, you know, I don't know I don't know that it does them that much good.

DT: Well, that interests me because I think that what we have found in a lot of the places we go is the prevailing myth that to go organic is going to be this Hercules size struggle to try and get a handle on these things and you're asking for trouble. And it probably wont work out.

So, while they paint a very negative picture of the hardship of organic; but you paint a pretty optimistic economic picture, if nothing else. It always seems like organic is going to cost us more and we wont be able to get as much for our crop. Therefore we wont try it. But your story seems to defy that?

GO: Yeah. Yeah, really a lot of my a lot of my interest in organic is lower input, but the only problem I guess, the only is if you're talking about scale. You know, I'm small. II farm less than a hundred acres of cotton so, so its easier to do that. If some of my neighbors farm three thousand acres. I don't that you can get the manpower in to do some of the things that they have to do.

You know, I don't know that it could be done. But, on the other side of that, is there's no market for cotton. The market for cotton right now is thirty cents a pound. The government allows us to put in loan for fifty on a conventional crop. So, so basically you're growing a market that you're growing for you're growing something that no one wants.

So, you know, maybe you don't need to do that. Bu but there's so many other things involved that, that keep probably keep people doing what they're doing. Like I say, a lot of that is your, your landlords, your, your bankers government programs, you know. There's just, there's just it's complicated, really. And for everyone to grow an organic crop, it would be it would be difficult but people can do it on some scale.

I mean, maybe a maybe a farmer can farm one circle of organic and maybe he can have some of his others crop, you know. It's, it's, it is complicated, but really to me, organic farming is, is a whole lot cheaper. Because I, I basically farm with just not having to put a whole, a whole lot of input into it. It's I guess that kind of goes along with the low input stainable agriculture that a lot of people talk about.

Its not necessarily chemical free, but it's you, you lower your inputs. And that's one of the reasons that were looking at irrigation. I think the irrigation is similar to the similar to the, the troubles with chemicals. You have a large input there and I don't know that you're not just trading dollars.

You know, maybe I can grow maybe I have a, a nine hundred pound cotton yield but maybe my three hundred pound dry land yield makes me just as much money, you know. Except for that one year, maybe, when, when it doesn't rain at all. So butand

DT: So you're thinking that it may make more sense to look at your net revenue instead of your gross.

GO: Well it definitely, definitely. I, I mean, that's, that's what I'm interested in. As, as farmers, that's what makes the difference. And it's, it's something that you just, it's hard to go against the grain, I will tell you. You know, like I have a lot of irrigation wells.

My family feels like that they really through the 50s and 60s, that's what separated them from a lot of other farmers and actually made them we had a bad drought in the 50s here, too. And a lot of people left here then. And it probably kept our family here. So now for me to just abandon those wells, and you know, its kind of it's, it's a little hard to do, to sit back and do that.

So that's, that's something were just kind of working on right now. And, and maybe the answer is limited irrigation. Maybe not full blown maximum yield production but maybe just kind of a limited irrigation. But, but if you think about organic farming, one thing we probably do more than, than the conventional guys do, is maybe we make more trips across the field with our tractors.

Well, when you do that, you know, you're, you're burning fossil fuels, so, so some of that, you know there's some trade-off there. You know, is,is, is that worse than, than using some of the chemicals that go into the soil? II don't I don't know. II really another thing that I would like to see allowed probably, is there's, there's a lot of technology that's, that's come about through plant genetics.

And one of them is, is the cottons that are resistant to the bollworms and things like. Well, were not allowed to use that. As organic farmers and to me I, you know, I don't really get that. II, you know, I think that if technology has something to offer us there that is maybe, maybe it is harmful. I don't see I haven't seen the connection on that.

But I would think that it would be great because that would encourage us to use less chemicals, you know, if we could do that. And the conventional guys get to do that. You know, it does help them probably eliminate some of their spraying. But if we could do that, boy, it would be a whole lot easier toto do organic because the worm the worm is more of a problem for us than the boll weevil.

DT: You mentioned boll weevil. Can you talk a little bit about the efforts in the conventional cotton business to eradicate the boll weevil; I think its called the Boll Weevil Eradication program?

GO: Yes. Our we're currently in the fourth year in, in this section. It started out in 99 and you if you farm cotton then you're under their guidelines. They monitor they monitor boll weevil populations and spray accordingly. In 1995 we harvested zero cotton because boll weevil completely wiped us out.

In 1997, basically the same thing happened. I think I harvested maybe eight bales of cotton. But the conventional crops were seriously hurt too even though they spent a lot of money spraying. I actually had one field that made better than, than a neighbor that sprayed several times.

But so they came along with the Boll Weevil Eradication where they monitor and they and they're going to spray every acre of cotton that's planted every week, once a week.

DT: Conventional and organic?

GO: No. They had a they had a they had a provision for the organic, that you could they would set you out a year. Now, you couldn't if you if you planted organic and they had to spray it, they would spray it and you would lose your certification. Of course, there would be the chance that they might not have to spray.

But we knew that we had enough weevil population that the trigger levels were going to make it where they sprayed. So we opted to not plant. And they had they had a program where they paid us some money toto lay out. So we, we actually had to lay out two years while they sprayed everybody else around.

And but and its been effective because this year this year we got to go back into planting and found no boll weevils. So, they basically you know, have they killed them out. But I don't know how much that had to do with the dry weather. And we had a pretty good winter last year and, too.

But my idea is that they, they ought to just pay all the farmers a hundred dollars an acre not to plant cotton because no one was making any money anyway and it would have been cheaper. And it once you, you know, if you had the county laid out for a couple of years, the boll weevil was going to starve out anyway. So but they didn't ask me.

So, anyway, were in this program and now were in it for ten years. And we have to pay I have to pay ten, fifteen dollars an acre, depends on dry land or irrigated, per year for ten years to help fund the program. And then, I think, the state actually probably matches half of that.

Its a very expensive program. But, you know, it, it has taken care of the weevil problem right now.

DT: Are there any problems with overspray? Or maintaining your organic certification?

GO: They, they're real good about monitoring. They put up I don't know if its kind of a litmus paper or something that they put around all my fields so that if the spray hits it it'll show up. And, you know, they're and they're real careful about the wind. They wont spray a crop next to me unless the wind.

So, you know, they've been very, very, very good about watching the organic fields and preserving those fields. But we did have a bean crop a couple of years ago that, that they detected some overspray when they did a leaf sampling of the crop. But it turned out the crop that the crop didn't make anything anyway so we didn't harvest it.

So it wasn't a wasn't a problem. But it it's, you know, its hard to keep overspray out. But, but they they do a real good job of it trying.

DT: What are they spraying? How do they do it?

GO: Well, they spray malathion with planes. And they have I think the, the planes are fitted with GPS instrumentation so they know exactly where they are and putting exactly the, the right amount. But it's, it's a bad deal. We have a little school here. We have kids that run cross-country.

And I know they were training one day and they got sick just from just from being around where they'd sprayed. Running, running down the roads, you know, around those crops.

DT: Have they found any traces of pesticides in the groundwater around here or in the surface water?

GO: The only think that we ever see that shows up is a is a nitrate level that might be just a little bit high. Its not it's not beyond what's acceptable. But and don't know if that's attributed to farming. Like I say, our area is I would say if you grassland to cultivation, I would say that were probably maybe twenty percent cultivation, eighty percent grassland.

So, so were not you know, that might not be as big a problem here as it would be, like, on the plains where, where there's nothing but kind of a cultivation. But our ground water, you know, it looks it looks pretty clean.

DT: And so most of the if there is any significant contamination its probably from the fertilizer?

GO: I would think so. We have awe have an oil industry in this area, too. And they were drilled back in the 30s and they weren't real careful with casing off of the ground water; so some of the trouble may be from that area, too. But, but, yeah, that would be from your fertilizers.

DT: I'm intrigued by the dilemma you've talked about where you put a lot of effort into cultivating this cotton, spraying it, fertilizing it and then you go to market and there's very little price for it. Why is that? Why is it difficult to demand, to get a good price for cotton?

GO: Oh, that's a big question. Cotton is first of all, cotton is a world commodity. So and its easily, easily shipped because its not perishable. So its you know, its easily grown in places like China. And I think, prior to the 70s, China raised basically no cotton. And now they now they grow twenty, thirty million bales a year, or they can.

So, so the, the price part of it is so affected by the world market and, and the supplies. But, you know, our own regulations, I think, somehow come into that. We used we used to the farm programs used to be geared where, you know, they subsidized the farmers, which is a good thing, because, I mean, its basically, a consumer subsidy to keep prices at a level.

But they also can, you know, control maybe what you were able to plant. Well, the programs the programs today still leave the decision of what to plant to the farmer, which the farmer likes to have that freedom, all right. But it allows it allows a boom or bust kind of a cycle in a product. So, you know, if the market for cotton gets pretty good, well, what do think everybody's going to do next year?

You know, its going a they're going to break the market by planting too much of it. So, so II feel like, you know, that if you're going to have a farm program that you that someone needs to kind of have an idea of controlling the supply a little bit.

But, but then you have the people involved that make money off the supply being large, the people that trade the cotton and, you know, they they do better if you have lots of stuff. They don't care what the price is because you make, you know, commission or whatever.

And I really think more, more of those kind of people really control what goes on than, than we do. You know, the farmer the farmer is pretty low on the food chain. [End of Reel 228