An ag-savvy former Texan that’s not a cotton farmer? Well, those are few and far between. But I grew up in the northeast part of the state, where the Piney Woods made pushing a plow difficult, and after World War II, the dairy industry stepped up to provide a better source of income than the subsistence farming most folks were doing. 

My maternal grandparents were teens during the Great Depression, and the monetary opportunity to turn the family farm into dairy when the milk plant came to town was too strong for kids who grew up so poor. So, I grew up around a different type of white gold.  

What does any of that have to do with cotton?  

The rhythm of a farming season can often feel repetitive. Maybe different crops, maybe different weather, but the same plant, treat, harvest, repeat happens without fail. Often, the progress made year to year can feel slow, and sometimes even non-existent in the face of difficult years like 2024.  

To people seeing fields from the road, seasonality becomes a time-marker that unknowingly intertwines their life with agriculture. So even I, who spent formative years not knowing a turn row from a tedder, have a life timeline indelibly inked by cotton.  

My dad’s side of the family lived in Hill Country, a four-hour drive through some of Texas’s best black-dirt cotton land. I remember watching the tilled rows walk by through the car window, imagining long legs running alongside us as we sped by. 

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In my earliest memories, until my grandmother passed in 2008, and our trips became less frequent, those fields were dotted by tarp-covered square modules.  

In 2015, my trips back home from college in Oklahoma took me past a new gin just a handful of miles from my parents’ place processing nicely wrapped round bales in a state-of-the-art facility.  

Those big changes in cotton processing punctuate some very formative memories for me - and I never had a clue or a hope of having a relationship with cotton.  

All this to say - people notice the strides farmers make in the field, even if they silently internalize those improvements. Progress is a slow push through nearly insurmountable obstacles like regulation, expenses, market pricing and weather challenges, but when those obstacles are overcome - the world takes note.  

Stewardship is the most important aspect of farming. Preserving the land for future on-farm generations and for future off-farm generations is one of the most critical tasks we perform. Making changes, however much we might loathe change, helps create a stronger future for everyone. 

Press on, finish 2024 strong, and know that the progress made on your farm turns into the fabric of all our lives.