Crop Yield and Profitability Trends in Southern High Plains of Texas

Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Preservation Hall Studio 9 (New Orleans Marriott)
Shyam Nair , Sam Houston State University
Art Wolfskill , Sam Houston State University
Colin Burton , Sam Houston State University
Kevin Reck , Sam Houston State University
Kirt Weyand , Sam Houston State University
The South Plains district of Texas is the most important cotton producing region in Texas. The district also has considerable acreage of corn, winter wheat, and grain sorghum. The agricultural producers in the region are on the forefront of adopting modern technologies and have gained large increases in productivity of these crops over time. However, there are considerable differences in productivity trends among these crops and between irrigated and dryland production practices of the same crop. This study analyzes the trends in irrigated productivity of the four crops. Further, it compares the trends in dryland productivity of cotton, grain sorghum, and winter wheat to the productivity gains of irrigated production using historic production data for 1985 to 2014. Since the profitability trends may not align with the productivity trends due to changes in commodity prices and costs, historic prices and production costs were used to estimate profitability of the crops under both practices. To avoid the effect of inflation in the trend analysis, the profits were inflated to 2014 values using farm machinery price index.