In the face of cotton acreage reduction ... What's A Gin To Do? - Cotton 24/7 Website - Cotton 24/7 Website

All in the Family

“One of the things I am most proud of is being named the Farm Family of the Year for the State of Arkansas in 1987,” says Richard Bransford of Bransford Farming Co.
The Farm Family of the Year program begins each year with selection of a top farm family in each county. It culminates each December with recognition of the district winners and the selection of a state Farm Family of the Year. County, district and the state winners are judged on production, efficiency and management of their farm operations, family life and rural/community leadership and values.
The award is sponsored by Farm Bureau and Entergy.
Bransford is in business with his son Rick. “He has been with me a long time, and we are partners,” says Bransford. “He comes by my house in Lonoke around 6:30 (a.m.) and we talk about what we want to do that day. Then he goes and does it. “I come out around 7:30 or 8,” he laughs. “But I do stay all day.”
Bransford has another son, Roger, who is a pilot for American Airlines, flying mostly internationally.
Roger got his start flying F4 fighter/bombers for the Arkansas National Guard. “I went up with him one time in an F4,” says Bransford. “I didn’t get sick. I couldn’t get sick – they would have laughed at me.”

With the drastic reduction in cotton acreage in 2007, all segments of the industry have been hit, and hit hard. But probably none more so than the ginning industry.

“We’re off 40%,” says Richard Bransford, president of the Pettus Gin Co., just outside of Lonoke, AR. “We hope to get 10,000 bales this year, and I don’t know that we’ll get it. We think we can gin it all in five weeks.”

In 2005, Pettus ginned around 17,000 bales, and that fell to 12,000 in ’06.

So what’s a gin to do? There is no undeniable answer, but to start: Reduce costs and increase efficiencies.

The first thing Pettus Gin did to reduce overhead was to eliminate the night crew and run only during the day. In addition, several employees were moved to part-time status from full-time, and seasonal labor was eliminated altogether.

“We are not a big gin and it’s an old gin,” says Bransford, “but it does a good job of ginning.” He attributes that, in large part, to the work of gin manager Jack Miller: “Jack has been with us for about 25 years – he does a super job. We’d be lost without him. I admit I am not a ginner – I know where everything is, but I can’t say I gin cotton.”

That’s a humble statement considering Bransford was president of the Southern Cotton Ginners Assn. (SCGA) in 1994/95, SCGA Cotton Ginner of the Year in 1997, and president of the National Cotton Ginners in 2001/02. He has served as treasurer of the SCGA for over 25 years.

“A Great Organization”

Richard Bransford has been active in the Southern Cotton Ginners Association (SCGA) for years, serving as its president and treasurer. He was also the organization’s Cotton Ginner of the Year.
“I take an active interest in it still,” he says. “This is a great organization. I don’t think there has been another association that I have been associated with that is as helpful to its members. But don’t misunderstand, there are a lot of organizations that help us.”
He has also served actively on boards of the National Cotton Council and Cotton Incorporated.
Bransford adds that the SCGA-developed safety programs and the skills of gin manager Jack Miller have kept Pettus Gin Co. injury free. “We’ve been fortunate,” he says. “We haven’t had a serious injury in this gin — ever.”

No to Temptation

Bransford says Pettus Gin Co. has resisted the temptation to invest millions in a more modern gin plant. “We haven’t changed a whole lot,” he says. “We try to keep things running, and right now, I don’t see any big changes … we haven’t had to speed up the gin a whole lot because we just don’t see the need to with no more cotton than we are ginning.”

And there’s another reason the gin has not had to spend money on increasing speed. Ask any ginner what the most dramatic change in the ginning industry has been over the past 20 or 30 years, and the answer, with very few exceptions, would be the introduction of modular handling of picked cotton.

“That’s it,” Bransford says. “Without modules, there wouldn’t be enough trailers in the world to handle all the cotton. Not just us, but other gins, too. As slow as gins are compared to the speed of harvest, you couldn’t do it with trailers. We’d go out of business.”

There is a sucker pipe at Pettus Gin, but it hasn’t worked in years. “It’s still hanging there,” says Bransford. “But it’s disconnected. We don’t want any trailers.”

Cash Flow

Pettus does not have on-site seed storage, and there are no plans to build any. “We sell all of our seed to American Cotton Seed Network in Brinkley (AR),” Bransford explains. “If you store it through harvest, I guess you would get a better price, but there is a lot of expense in that seed house – insurance and not having your money tied up instead of cash flowing. We try to operate on a shoe string and we like to have our seed money coming in to pay expenses as we go along.”

If there is a positive side to the eruption in grain prices for cotton growers and ginners, it is that the per-ton price for cottonseed as a feed ingredient has somewhat followed along. “Last year,” says Bransford, “we sold it for $100 per ton. This year we have most of it booked for $159. That’s considerable. But as high as soybeans are, it should be higher because they usually stay together. But it’s up, and that’s going to be a big help.”

Boll Weevil Eradication: The Payday

Richard Bransford and his son Rick are partners in Bransford Farming Co.
So far, they have resisted the temptation to swap cotton acreage for corn. And as president of Pettus Gin Co., Bransford says, “We don’t have any on-farm storage and corn doesn’t go through a gin very well.”
What the Bransford do is grow 860 acres of cotton – down from 1,000 acres in ’06 – 1,300 acres of soybeans and 700 acres of rice.
“Cotton is where I made what little money I have made over the last 56 years,” he says. “But when soybeans are $9 (per bushel) and wheat is way up, it looks awful good on the type ground we have. I have cut down on cotton myself, and I am born and bred cotton.”
Bransford says a major reason he and his son have been able to stay in cotton is the success of the Boll Weevil Eradication Program (BWEP).
“What has done more for cotton farming over for the past few years has been boll-weevil eradication,” he explains. “That has made a tremendous difference for us.”
Before boll weevil eradication and the introduction of Bt varieties, it was not at all unusual for some growers to spray 14 or 15 times for boll weevils, bollworms and budworms, “and we’d still get eaten up,” says Bransford. “Now we hardly spray anything. Boll weevils are just not here and they don’t have a chance to get here.”
The Central BWEP zone that Bransford is in runs through central Arkansas down to the Louisiana line and, he says, “with the exception of right next to Louisiana, they haven’t found a boll weevil in our zone for 2 years. The boll weevil is eradicated here.”

Captions:

Richard Bransford

Richard Bransford and his son Rick with the Jack Deloney print awarded to the Arkansas Farm Family of the Year.