Drought decimates Texas' key cotton crop

On Sutton Page's ravaged cotton fields, there is almost nothing left to pick. The Texas farmer managed to salvage maybe a fifth of his crop, but the rest was lost to the severe drought that has taken a steep toll across the region.

This year, his harvest is "not well," he says, but in reality, the drought in northern Texas has proven to be a disaster, with most of Page's neighbors not even bothering to harvest their crop, leaving "bare, bare fields."

This year, national production will hit its lowest level since 2015, down 21 percent year-on-year, and Texas will suffer a 58 percent drop, the US Department of Agriculture estimates.

In the northwest of the state, where cotton is the lifeline of the local economy and water is scarce, the 2022 harvest "could be one of the worst in 30 years," worries Darren Hudson, professor of agricultural economics at Texas Tech University.

With the cascading consequences for the global textile industry, in an economy already reeling from the pandemic, Hudson put the likely economic impact for the region at $2 billion.

Cotton farmers in the plains of Texas know there will always be bad years, but the drought of 2022 could be the worst yet. And some worry there could be more on the way.

These farmers in Texas, a state where climate skepticism abounds, prefer to see unpredictable weather cycles repeating themselves rather than the effects of global warming, which makes extreme weather events more common.

Texas produces almost half of America's cotton, and the United States is the world's third largest supplier, behind India and China.