HOKE COUNTY, N.C. — Cotton farmers across the United States are busy harvesting now. And North Carolina is the seventh-largest producer of cotton in the country.
While practices in the industry have gotten faster, farmers are still facing issues from inflation to labor shortages.
What You Need To Know
North Carolina is the seventh-largest producer of cotton in the country
The Hoke Robeson Gin in Hoke County processes cotton for area farmers and beyond
While ginning speeds up the process, the industry is still facing challenges from inflation and supply-chain shortages
Kelly Archambault oversees some of the production at the Hoke-Robeson Gin in Red Springs. She's a fifth-generation farmer. And after leaving the business briefly for a different career, she realized this is exactly where she wanted to be.
"I wanted to raise my child, back where I was raised around family and have the values," Archambault said. "I just needed to feel more like I belonged, and the farm was what I needed to come back to.”
The Hoke Robeson gin is a machine that easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds. It's a multi-step process, and all parts of the cotton are used for things like fabric and feed for dairy cows.
And while some things have gotten easier, other challenges are weighing the industry down, like labor shortages, supply-chain issues and costs for fertilizer and equipment.
"The input costs have gone up to the point where it’s really important for your yield to be as high as it can be to be able to meet it," Archambault said. "At this point, there’s lots of time us as farmers are feeling like we can’t meet that yield line to make it.”
She says those issues don’t just impact farmers but consumers too. It's why her ultimate goal is to educate people about how farming plays a role in their lives every day and why helping farms stay afloat in the U.S. is essential
"This is for everybody, it’s not just a farmer making a living," she said. "This is how our country is going to keep going. It's important from the ground up. If we don’t have farmers, we don’t have anything.”
Typically cotton is harvested in North Carolina through November. But because of Hurricane Ian, farmers lost a few weeks of being able to pick their fields. Archambault hopes to be done with harvest by Christmas.