VICKY BOYD
During 2019, 51.7% of all plastic calls at the Corpus Christi, Texas, cotton classing office were yellow, followed by 29.7% pink, 6.5% blue and 5.1% other.
Redoubling The Effort Industry Focuses On Prevention To Reduce Growing Plastic Contamination Issue BY VICKY BOYD MANAGING EDITOR
P
lastic contamination has long been the bane of the U.S. cotton industry, which prides itself on producing a clean, quality product. Efforts to reduce the problem have redoubled in the past few years as plastic contamination continues to grow, partly due to new round bale technology. At the center of industry efforts is educating and training farmers and gin employees about ways to prevent plastic from making it to the gin. “We need to do a better job from the field to the gin point of trying to eliminate any of this plastic from getting into the gin in the first place,” says Tony Williams, executive director of the Texas Cotton Ginners’ Association. “Education I think is the key — not just for us as gin members, but it really has to go back to the guy who’s operating that harvest equipment.” His comments came during a recent online plastic contamination seminar hosted by Texas A&M AgriLife Extension
14
COTTON FARMING | JUNE 2020
Service offices in Nueces and San Patricio counties. San Patricio County also is home to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s cotton classing office in Corpus Christi, which had the dubious distinction of having nearly 40% — or 1,587 — of all plastic-contaminated bales in the country in 2019. The Lamesa, Texas, classing office, on the other hand, had only 93 plastic calls. Because each office handles a different amount of cotton, the overall numbers don’t tell the whole story, says Ben Roble, Corpus Christi classing office area director. With the 2019 crop, his office had one plastic call for every 1,348 bales classed. On the other end of the spectrum, the classing office in Florence, South Carolina, had one plastic call for every 16,797 bales classed. “We’ve stayed like that during the past two years — nothing has changed,” he says. “I was seeing a sample with plastic every hour. In Florence, they were seeing a sample every shift or possibly even longer.” COTTONFARMING.COM
