As Staplcotn celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, it continues to be a pleasure to work in Greenwood, the cotton marketing cooperative’s president and CEO said Tuesday.
“We’re a 100-year-old company, and we’re proud to be in Greenwood,” Hank Reichle told the Greenwood Rotary Club. “I appreciate to let you know what we do.”
Staplcotn, the oldest and one of the largest cotton marketing cooperatives in the United States, continues to take on challenges.
For example, Reichle said recent flooding in Greenwood dramatically affected production for this year. “We think that possibly 5 to 8% of what was planted in Mississippi may have been drowned out this year,” he said.
According to Reichle, the flooding affected soybean and corn production on a larger scale than even cotton.
Staplcotn employs more than 200 people, most of whom are full-time and others seasonal. At least half of the workers are located in Leflore County, Reichle said.
A 100% producer-owned cooperative, Staplcotn handles more than 14,000 farm accounts in 11 states: Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Another branch of Staplcotn includes Stapldiscount, a wholly owned lending institution founded in 1923 that provides agricultural loans.
Staplcotn’s sales average over $1 billion annually, and it markets around 2.5 million bales of cotton annually.
“So, what can you make out of 2.5 million bales of cotton?” Reichle said. “Well, that’s roughly 1.25 billion pounds, so you can make about 2.5 billion T-shirts.”
Staplcotn has about 7,473 members, more than half of them producers. It has 14 warehouses with the capacity to store over a million bales of cotton at one time.
Staplcotn has made its name in the exporter market over the years. According to the Journal of Commerce Top 100 Exporter rankings for 2020, Staplcotn ranked 30th, four spots in front of Walmart. Reichle said Staplcotn’s top three export destinations are China, India and Vietnam.
The agriculture industry has been pushing to become more environmentally sustainable, and Staplcotn has tried its best to reduce its environmental footprint over the past 35 years, Reichle said. Staplcotn has had an 82% reduction in water use per pound and a 31% reduction in land use.
Staplcotn has specifically made efforts in the area of sustainability through increased technology, which involves devoting more inputs to areas where they are needed so that they are not wasted, he said.
Reichle said that sustainability will soon become a huge emphasis in the agriculture industry moving forward. He said the companies will soon be, if they’re not already, charged a discount on their production if they can’t provide documentation stating that their company is making efforts to be sustainable.
“I think sustainability is going to be one of the main drivers of what cotton will be worth moving forward,” Reichle said.
- Contact Drew Richardson at 581-7233 or drichardson@gwcommonwealth.com.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported how many bales of cotton Staplcotn markets. It markets around 2.5 million bales of cotton annually.
