$3.5 Million Grant Supports US Organic Cotton Farming Research
Some major players in the U.S. cotton community are aiming to increase the yield of organic cotton to meet a growing domestic demand now being filled by imports.
Texas A&M AgriLife Research is leading a project to identify problems affecting U.S. cotton growers and find solutions to them, while increasing sustainability, regenerative farming and the use of environmentally sound agriculture practices.
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This is designed to help farmers already growing organic cotton to improve quality and yield, while helping them transition more acreage into organic production, according to a statement by Texas A&M.
“In the areas where they are already producing organic cotton we need to understand the sustainability of those operations in terms of soil health and economics, and identify what can be done to improve sustainability where lacking,” according to Muthukumar Bagavathiannan, Ph.D., Billie Turner Professor of Production Agronomy at the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, department of soil and crop sciences.
The study is called Fostering Sustainable Organic Cotton Production in the U.S. Through Research and Outreach on Organic Regenerative Practices and is being funded by a $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
The new research project is an expansion of a smaller project commenced three years ago that enabled scientists to analyze the production system and lay the groundwork for this new initiative.
“This work will be vital to helping increase the success and growth of domestic organic cotton, relieving the reliance on imports to meet our domestic demand for this crop,” said Amber Sciligo, Ph.D., director of science programs at the Organic Center in Washington, D.C.
There are many challenges facing U.S. cotton growers, according to Sciligo, and the study is meant to address them. They include soil health, sustainability, non-toxic insecticides, microbial dynamics, management practices, and agriculture basics like tillage, irrigation, mulch and cover crops. Practices will be studied to determine which can be improved or shared among growers.
Practices such as weed control will get a close look, according to Bagavathiannan. “Weed control and management is a major problem in organic cotton,” he said. “Currently, tillage is the major practice used to control weeds, but continuous tillage can be destructive to long-term soil health.”
Much of the work will take place in the actual cotton fields, some of it done by undergraduate students from participating schools. Farmers in the program will collect and submit soil samples, and over a four-year period small plot experiments will be conducted in certified or transitioning organic fields in Texas, where 40 percent of U.S. cotton is grown, New Mexico and Tennessee, to evaluate specific regenerative management practices.
There will also be research into commercializing carbon, which can be used as a profit center.
“There is a growing carbon market that organic cotton producers can tap into to get additional revenues,” said Nithya Rajan, Ph.D., AgriLife Research crop physiologist/agroecologist who will be assessing soil carbon dynamics and greenhouse gas emissions on the project.
Organic cotton varieties under study will be those developed by cotton breeder Dr. Jane Dever in previous research projects subsidized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s organic programs. According to Bagavathiannan, this is a tremendous resource that will allow the study of allelopathic weed suppression properties in organic cotton. In other words, studying which plants may be hospitable or hostile to weed growth.
In addition to Texas A&M AgriLife Research, other institutions participating in the project include Texas Tech University, New Mexico State University, Sam Houston State University and the Soil Health Institute, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University-Kingsville, as well as textile industry organizations and nonprofits including the Organic Center.
According to USDA data from August, America produced 42,883 bales of organic Upland and American Pima cotton last year. That’s 11,248 fewer bales than 2021. Another 2,212 bales of the fiber were classified as in transition. The agency’s report from April 13 puts 2022/23 total domestic cotton output at 14.7 million bales, similar to where it was in 2020.
Additional reporting by Jessica Binns.
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