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Texas Tech University and USDA to sign historic agreement to open a state-of-the-art cotton classing facility on campus.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

June 28, 2019

1 Min Read
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Shelley E. Huguley

Monday, July 1, 2019, Texas Tech University and the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Cotton and Tobacco Program (C&T) will sign a cooperative agreement to allow C&T to construct, own and operate a cotton classing facility on Texas Tech's campus near the Rawls Golf Course.

Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec and USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Greg Ibach, will sign the agreement at 10:30 a.m., at Texas Tech in the courtyard of the Bayer Plant Science Building, 2911 15th Street. Following, Schovanec and Ibach also will participate in a ceremonial groundbreaking.

Cotton classing offices across the U.S. measure and classify cotton by its specific physical attributes, enabling it to be marketed by producers. But classing information also gives precise information to consumers regarding the cotton fibers, allowing it to be used in the most optimized way to produce top-quality cotton products. While Lubbock is already home to the largest cotton classing office in the world, the new state-of-the-art facility with its campus location will not only benefit the university and U.S. cotton industry but the community as well, reports Texas Tech University in a June 28 news release. 

U.S. Reps. Jodey Arrington and Mike Conaway also will deliver remarks at the event. Arrington represents the 19th district and serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, and Conaway represents the 11th district of Texas and is the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture.

About the Author(s)

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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