er and it went through some four-bale cotton, proving that ultra narrow row cotton can yield.”
Getting a yield increase is still critical to adapting new production techniques, but parallel to that is the need to reduce costs.
”I have done some preliminary calculations and it looks like UNR was about $80 per acre cheaper to grow than conventional cotton. Twin-row 30 cotton is about $50 cheaper to grow than conventional single row cotton.”
Problems with the picker have tempered Burn's enthusiasm a bit on the 15-inch system. “I don't think Deere is going to come back again to our farm with the system. You need a perfect season to make this work, and this was not the perfect season.”
However, the disappointing '05 experiment has not lessened his drive to cut costs to stay in the cotton business.
“We do not know what is going to happen with the new farm bill, but it seems certain support will be reduced. For us to stay in the cotton business, we have got to cut costs,” he said.
The Deere 15-inch system is expensive. The planter costs $50,000 and the 12-row picker is well into six figures.
There may not be a Western market for hardware that expensive.
The picker has been tested at J.G. Boswell on Pima cotton. However, most Pima is second picked and the cut-and-twist harvesting system will not second pick, thereby excluding the Deere system from more than half the cotton acreage in the valley. Of an estimated 600,000 acres of cotton expected to be planted in the valley in '06, at least half will be Pima.
That means there will be only about 250,000 acres of Acala/upland cotton in the valley next season and there are few growers who could afford to buy the planter and 12-row picker to gather 15-inch cotton. However, Deere said the picker mechanisms for the new harvesting system can be retrofitted to existing late model picker and that may be incentive enough to buy or lease the planter and give 15-inch cotton a try by replacing heads of older machines with the UNR picking mechanism.
“I think 10 years ago something like this Deere UNR spindle picking system would have created a lot more interest in 15-inch cotton in California,” said Burns. There were more than 1.5 million acres of Acala/upland cottons then.
“Unfortunately, I think this UNR picker system is about 10 years too late for the valley,” he added. “It could have saved a lot of acres that are now gone” due to increasing production costs. Burns believes growers would have been willing to try the 15-inch system to stay in the cotton business a decade ago before acreage started falling.