Cotton Farming in the United States (NAICS 11192)

An investor's primer for a general audience. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 11192 is the five-digit "industry" for U.S. cotton farming. It contains exactly one six-digit national industry — 111920, Cotton Farming — so this level and its single child describe the same set of farms. This page is a short rollup; for the full detail, read the 111920 primer.

1. Overview

Cotton farming is the seasonal, asset-intensive business of growing a harvestable plant fiber (lint) plus its byproduct seed. It sits at the start of a long chain — cotton → gin → yarn → fabric → clothing and home textiles — and ends at the "farm gate," the point of first sale where the grower hands the crop to a gin, merchant, cooperative, or contract buyer.[4] Because growers sell a raw commodity priced on a global exchange, the economics look like those of any commodity producer: revenue is roughly yield × price, and profit is whatever survives input, land, harvest, and financing costs. Most of the crop is exported, so the industry is unusually exposed to overseas mill demand, trade policy, and the dollar.[1]

The one fact that shapes everything for an outside investor: there is essentially no large, liquid, pure-play publicly traded U.S. cotton-farming company. The industry is thousands of mostly private, family-owned farms. Public exposure is almost entirely indirect — farmland real-estate investment trusts (REITs), the seed/fertilizer/chemical/equipment suppliers, downstream processors and merchants, and cotton-futures products. Direct exposure is private: owning or leasing farmland, operating a farm, or investing through private farmland or agribusiness funds.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested system: two-digit sectors split into three-digit subsectors, then four-digit industry groups, then five-digit industries, then six-digit national industries. NAICS 11192 (the five-digit industry) has only one six-digit child:

• 111920 — Cotton Farming: establishments primarily engaged in growing cotton (roughly 97% upland cotton, about 3% American Pima / extra-long staple, or ELS).[1]

Because a five-digit industry is just the sum of its six-digit children and here there is exactly one child, 11192 and 111920 are the same industry — same farms, same acreage, same value. The five-digit code exists only as a structural placeholder for the national industry beneath it; the U.S. simply did not need to split cotton farming into finer national industries. Everything an investor would say about 11192 is what the 111920 primer says in full — this page does not repeat it. (Adjacent activities such as cotton ginning (NAICS 115111), cottonseed crushing (311224), raw-cotton wholesaling (424590), and textile/apparel manufacturing (313/314/315) sit in other codes and should not be conflated with the farm.[4])

3. How big this level is

Our ingested federal stats for this exact node (11192): none. We have no ingested stat_metrics for the five-digit code, so every figure below is carried up from the one child, 111920, and labeled to its cited federal source. Because the level equals its single child, the child's figures are this level's figures.

From the 2022 Census of Agriculture (most recent), USDA/NASS (U.S. Department of Agriculture / National Agricultural Statistics Service) reports:[3]

• 7,724 farms classified primarily as cotton farms; 14,283 farms grew cotton at all (many field-crop farms grow it alongside corn, wheat, sorghum, or peanuts).
• About 7.74 million acres harvested, producing roughly 14.9 million bales (a bale ≈ 480 pounds of cleaned lint).[3][1]
• $6.54 billion — market value of cotton and cottonseed sold in 2022.
• About 35% of harvested acres irrigated; the rest dryland (rain-fed).
• Value is highly concentrated: the ~10,700 farms selling $50,000+ accounted for about 99% of that $6.54 billion.[3]

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard for the code is $3.25 million in average annual receipts — an eligibility threshold, not an industry-revenue estimate; because a typical cotton operation sells only a few hundred thousand dollars a year, effectively the entire industry counts as "small business."[2]

Undercount caveat. The general-business datasets investors usually reach for — the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) and Nonemployer Statistics (NES) — exclude crop and animal production by design, so they show only a few thousand records for this code, a severe undercount.[5][6] Most farms report through the operator's household, not as conventional payroll employers. The authoritative count is the USDA Census of Agriculture, taken every five years.

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates

Value concentrates in the single child (there is no sibling to spread it across), and within that child it concentrates in a relatively small number of larger operations: USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) estimates large-scale family farms generated about 65% of U.S. cotton production value in 2022.[17] But almost none of that value is directly investable in public markets. The practical routes (detailed in the 111920 primer, §4):

• Near-direct listed exposure is limited to J.G. Boswell (OTC: BWEL), a thinly traded, diversified California Pima grower/processor — the closest thing to a listed cotton farm, with real liquidity and disclosure limits.[21]
• Farmland REITs — chiefly Farmland Partners (NYSE: FPI), which leases row-crop ground including cotton — offer land ownership and rent income with stock-market liquidity, but no REIT is a cotton pure play.[18][19]
• Input, equipment, and processing stocks — Deere (NYSE: DE), CNH (NYSE: CNH), AGCO (NYSE: AGCO); Corteva (NYSE: CTVA), Bayer (OTC: BAYRY), BASF (OTC: BASFY); ADM (NYSE: ADM) — are "picks-and-shovels" exposure to farm spending, not to the cotton price.
• Cotton-price exposure — ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) Cotton No. 2 futures (CT) or the futures-linked ETN (exchange-traded note) BAL — is a direct bet on lint prices, with no farmland or dividend.
• Private / member-owned participants — grower cooperatives (Plains Cotton Cooperative Association, Staplcotn, Calcot, Carolinas Cotton Growers — the Amcot group), which market as much as 40% of the U.S. crop,[16] and global merchants (Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Olam Agri) — dominate origination and export but are not investable pure plays.

5. How the money works

Cotton is a price-cycle commodity business. Gross revenue per acre is essentially (lint yield × lint price) + cottonseed byproduct value + eligible government/insurance payments. The world price reference is ICE Cotton No. 2 futures, in U.S. cents per pound; recent U.S. season-average farm prices ran about 76¢/lb for 2023/24, roughly 63¢ for 2024/25, and near 61¢ for 2025/26 — soft enough to sit near or below break-even for many growers.[9] Irrigated cotton yields far more than dryland but costs more to grow, and cottonseed (about 1.5 pounds per pound of lint) is a real coproduct sold into feed, oil, and meal that offsets ginning and harvest cost.[26] Because break-evens for many growers are near or above recent prices, the federal safety net (§7) is central to whether a cotton year is profitable. (Full margin and marketing mechanics: 111920 primer, §5.)

6. Demand drivers

• Global textile and apparel demand, concentrated in Asian mills — cotton ultimately sells as yarn for clothing and home goods, tracking global consumer spending.[1]
• Exports dominate: the U.S. exports roughly 80% of the cotton it grows, and exports are more than 85% of total demand for the U.S. crop (~$5 billion in 2024; top buyers China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh).[1][11]
• Competition from synthetic fibers — polyester and other man-made fibers now supply the majority of world fiber and gain share when oil is cheap.
• Global supply competition — the U.S. was overtaken by Brazil as the top cotton exporter in 2023/24 (Brazil ~30.5% of world exports vs. U.S. ~25.8% in 2024/25), a structural headwind for U.S. export prices.[12]

7. Regulation

Cotton is one of the most policy-shaped crops in U.S. agriculture. Under the Farm Bill, growers enroll "seed cotton" base acres in Price Loss Coverage (PLC) or Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) via USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA); the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) raised the seed-cotton reference price from 36.7 to 42.0¢/lb starting with the 2025 crop.[21] USDA's Risk Management Agency (RMA) runs subsidized crop insurance plus the cotton-specific Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX).[22] Ad-hoc aid (e.g., the 2024-crop Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, ECAP, at $84.74/planted acre) fills gaps in weak years.[23] Other regimes: USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) grading/classing;[25] Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pesticide rules (dicamba drift is a recurring flashpoint); state water law over irrigation, including the declining Ogallala Aquifer under the Texas High Plains;[24] and trade policy, including Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) curbs on Xinjiang-origin cotton goods. (Full detail: 111920 primer, §7.)

8. Consolidation

The whole chain is consolidating around scale: fewer, larger farms (large-scale family farms already generate ~65% of cotton value);[17] active U.S. cotton gins down from about 2,254 in 1980 to 419 in the 2025 season;[13][14] a cottonseed-trait oligopoly (Bayer/Deltapine, Corteva/PhytoGen, BASF/FiberMax-Stoneville, Syngenta control an estimated 93.5% of the trait market);[15] and a handful of merchants plus grower cooperatives (~40% of the crop) dominating marketing.[16] Barriers to entry are high — land, water rights, expensive specialized equipment, and a year of working capital — which favors established operators and well-capitalized landowners.

9. Risks

• Price cyclicality — soft prices in 2024–25 drove acreage to a decade low.[7]
• Weather and abandonment — drought, heat, and storms (especially the dryland Texas High Plains) can destroy much of a crop in one year; USDA's July 2026 outlook projected 2026/27 abandonment (planted acres not harvested) at 23.5%.[10][3]
• Export/trade exposure — with ~80% of the crop exported, the industry lives on foreign demand, tariffs, sanctions, and the dollar.[11]
• Structural competition — Brazil's low-cost expansion and the secular rise of synthetics pressure long-run price.[12]
• Input and interest-rate squeeze; water risk; policy dependence — costs can outrun lint prices, groundwater rules tighten, and much of weak-year profitability comes from federal programs.
• Financial/liquidity risk — leveraged farms and thin vehicles (e.g., BWEL) can be hard to refinance or exit.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Because 11192 is identical to 111920, the investment playbook is the same. Public-market routes are almost all indirect: near-direct BWEL (thin, diversified); farmland REITs (FPI) for land ownership and rent with liquidity; input/equipment/processing stocks (DE, CNH, AGCO, CTVA, BAYRY, BASFY, ADM) as picks-and-shovels; and ICE cotton futures (CT) or the BAL ETN for pure price exposure. Private-market routes are the direct ones: owning or leasing farmland, operating a farm, providing secured operating credit, or committing to a private farmland/agribusiness fund — the genuine "own the industry" exposure public markets don't offer.

Reported outlook. USDA's July 2026 forecast projected the 2026/27 U.S. balance at roughly 13.7 million bales produced against 13.9 million bales of use, ~12.3 million bales exported, ~4.1 million bales of ending stocks (~29.5% stocks-to-use), and a season-average farm price near 73¢/lb — modestly constructive for efficient producers, not a growth story.[10] What to watch: the ICE cotton price and its break-even gap; export demand (China, Vietnam); Brazil's harvest; Texas and Southeast weather; the dollar; and the newly raised 42-cent reference price plus any further ad-hoc aid.[7][10][21]

For the full analysis — investable-universe table, detailed economics, regulatory regimes, and sources — see the child primer, NAICS 111920 Cotton Farming.

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Sources

(Drawn from the 111920 child primer; numbering preserved for cross-reference.)

1. USDA Economic Research Service, Cotton and Wool — Cotton Sector at a Glance, 2024/2025. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/cotton-and-wool/cotton-sector-at-a-glance
2. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards (13 CFR 121.201), effective March 17, 2023 (NAICS 111920 = $3.25 million average annual receipts). https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
3. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2022 Census of Agriculture, Volume 1, Chapter 1 (United States), 2024. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/
4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Manual — definition of 111920 and adjacent codes. https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
5. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns — Methodology (excludes crop and animal production). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics — FAQ (excludes crop production). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics/about/faq.html
7. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Crop Production 2025 Summary. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/cropan26.pdf
8. USDA Economic Research Service, Cotton and Wool Outlook — season-average farm-price series. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/cotton-and-wool/
9. USDA Economic Research Service, Cotton and Wool Outlook: July 2026 — 2026/27 balance sheet and 23.5% projected abandonment. https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/115080
10. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service / ERS, U.S. Cotton Exports and Destinations. https://www.fas.usda.gov/commodities/cotton
11. USDA ERS / Fibre2Fashion, Brazil tops global cotton exports (~30.5% share, 2024/25) vs. U.S. ~25.8%. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/
12. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Cotton Ginnings 2025 Summary (419 active gins). https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/n583xt96p
13. Cotton Grower, Ginning Report: Strength in Smaller Numbers (about 2,254 active gins in 1980). https://www.cottongrower.com/cotton-production/ginning/ginning-report-strength-in-smaller-numbers/
14. SeedWorld / USDA, USDA Details Market Shares of Biggest Seed Industry Players (top-4 firms ~93.5% of cottonseed-trait market), 2023. https://www.seedworld.com/us/2023/10/04/usda-details-market-shares-of-biggest-seed-industry-players/
15. Plains Cotton Cooperative Association, Amcot: The Voice of American Cotton Growers (cooperatives market ~40% of the U.S. crop). https://pcca.com/article/amcot-the-voice-of-american-cotton-growers/
16. USDA Economic Research Service, Large-Scale Family Farms Lead in Value of Production for Many Commodities in 2022 (cotton ~65% of value), 2024. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/108249
17. Farmland Partners Inc., Form 10-K for FY2025 (SEC) — ~71,600 acres; ~60% of portfolio value in primary crops including cotton. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1591670/000110465926017533/fpi-20251231x10k.htm
18. Gladstone Land Corporation, Form 10-K for FY2025 (SEC) — 144 farms, 98,688 acres across 14 states. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1495240/000149524026000007/land-20251231.htm
19. J.G. Boswell Company, Company Overview, and OTC Markets, BWEL Profile. https://jgboswell.com/; https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/BWEL/profile
20. USDA Farm Service Agency, Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC). https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/income-support/arc-plc
21. American Farm Bureau Federation, One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Final Agricultural Provisions (seed cotton reference price raised 36.7 → 42.0 ¢/lb), 2025. https://www.fb.org/market-intel/one-big-beautiful-bill-act-final-agricultural-provisions
22. USDA Risk Management Agency, Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX) and Margin Coverage Option (MCO). https://www.rma.usda.gov/policy-procedure/insurance-plans
23. American Farm Bureau Federation, Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP): What You Need to Know (cotton $84.74/planted acre), 2025. https://www.fb.org/market-intel/emergency-commodity-assistance-program-ecap-what-you-need-to-know
24. Texas A&M / ScienceDirect, Cotton production, irrigation, and the Ogallala Aquifer in the Texas High Plains, 2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378377421006636
25. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Cotton and Tobacco — Rules and Regulations (cotton classing/standards). https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/cotton-and-tobacco
26. USDA Economic Research Service, Characteristics and Production Costs of U.S. Cotton Farms (cottonseed as coproduct). https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=42824