What price level could push Western cotton growers to make the change to feed grains?
“To switch away from cotton, $7 per hundredweight for sorghum gets growers’ attention, which is about where sorghum prices are right now. $10 per hundredweight could be the breaking point,” said Mike Ottman, feed grains specialist with the University of Arizona. “I can imagine cotton growers having a mix (cotton and feed grains) but to fully give up cotton is hard to imagine,” he said. Ottman pointed to the huge capital investment cotton farmers have in planters and pickers. Yielding Arizona cotton acres to feed grains is the goal of John Skelley, president and general manager of Pinal Energy LLC. The company is constructing the first ethanol plant in Arizona, a $62 million facility located near Maricopa about 30 miles southwest of Phoenix. With fuel production scheduled to begin in May 2007, the plant will produce 52 million gallons of ethanol annually. The 18 million bushels of corn required annually to run the plant will initially be railed in from the Midwest. Pinal Energy will pur
