BENT COUNTY — It’s easy to spot Caleb Wertz’s fields along the farmland east of Las Animas. About half of the Wertz family’s land is growing corn but the other half is filled with scraggly, foot-high plants dotted with soft white bulbs. Bulbs as soft as cotton.

The Cotton Belt has never reached into Colorado before. But with the crop growing successfully for years in northern Oklahoma and Kansas, Wertz is on the front lines of southeast Colorado farmers testing if cotton can take root as an option here as well.

In his second year of seriously attempting to grow cotton, Wertz has a combined 400 acres on his farm and his father Brent Wertz’s neighboring land. Wertz was out Friday morning, driving a large John Deere harvester to start collecting the cotton into large bales at the end of the season.

Neighboring farmers, Colorado Springs Utilities staff and officials from the cotton industry watched the harvest. All were interested in whether cotton could be a money-making crop in a new state while using less water than a similar cornfield.

“You can’t ask a farmer to pick a crop they won’t make the same money on. But if you can find one with the same revenue and that uses significantly less water, there is broad applicability,” said Scott Lorenz, who supervises Colorado Springs Utilities’ water sharing program.

Wertz first connected with Utilities in 2022 when he signed one of the water-sharing agreements Utilities has pursued with interested Bent County farmers. Lorenz explained the program offers farmers improvements such as replacing a square flood-irrigated field with a smaller, circular center-pivot irrigation system. In return, Utilities received water rights to the field’s corners that were no longer being actively farmed.

Lorenz said that Utilities received around 3,800 acre-feet of water per year from all of the water sharing agreements, which was one way to diversify the sources of Colorado Springs’ water supply.

Wertz, who was 21 when he first worked with Utilities, was an aspiring fifth-generation farmer who said he already was thinking about creative farming options for the area.  His wife, Zaiden Wertz, said the idea to pursue cotton might have come during a long drive back from visiting her family in Texas.

Zaiden said she was extremely skeptical of the idea when Caleb first suggested it, but she’s now an advocate for the crop’s potential.

“We want to enhance our farms. One of our principal goals is for the valley to keep generational farming alive, and we think cotton is a means to do that,” Zaiden said.

Wertz approached Utilities in 2024 about his interest in cotton. Lorenz said they agreed to support a three-year alternative crop study to explore if helping farmers switch to a different crop was another way Utilities could benefit when they used less water.

Cotton needs between 12 and 24 inches of water over the course of the season to grow, which is on the high end of all crops. Wertz emphasized that cotton is less thirsty than corn, which usually requires 20 to 30 inches of water, and is more drought-resistant.

“We can get a similar return as corn, but we can do it while meeting some water consumption needs, and with less fertilizer too,” Wertz said.

The most recent monthly forecast from the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that 13.2 million bales of cotton will be produced in the United States during the 2025-2026 harvest season. The report said that while this year has seen good growing conditions, it will still end up as one of the smallest harvests since 2015.

Colorado Springs Utilities purchasing water from Lower Arkansas Valley farmers – Colorado Springs Gazette

Colorado Springs approves Arkansas River water agreement with Bent County – Colorado Springs Gazette

COTTON RESEARCH TAKES HOLD IN BACA COUNTY

Wertz was not the first Colorado farmer to experiment with growing cotton. In 2017 at Colorado State University’s Plainsman Research Center in Baca County, then-superintendent and lead researcher Kevin Larson ran a trial study for dry-land cotton.

An expanded second version of the study was conducted there this year by Zane Jenkins, who succeeded Larson as the lead research scientist. Jenkins graduated from Texas A&M University, where he picked cotton by hand for a student work project. He had performed agricultural research in Texas and Kansas before taking over CSU’s research center in the far southeast corner of the state.

Despite his hands-on experience, Jenkins emphasized that he was not an expert on the crop. The new study at the Plainsman Center was inspired by hearing from several farmers who were curious about the option.

“I just happen to be the guy who’s working with it. I want to be the one who makes mistakes on our one-acre plot and tells people about it, so they don’t have to risk that on hundreds of acres,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins said that as recently as 40 years ago, it had been unusual for cotton to grow even in northern Texas. In recent decades, it expanded north into Oklahoma and Kansas, and it returned to Virginia after years of minimal growth.

Kansas has been regularly producing more than 100,00 acres of cotton per year since 2017, according to data from the USDA.

One of the major limiting factors has been temperature. Jenkins said that cotton needs an extended run of warm days to germinate, with the soil consistently reaching at least 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Even after it was planted, it required farmers’ constant attention and some luck to avoid cold snaps.

“For the first month, it’s struggling. It is looking for ways to die. But once it gets established and gets a few inches high, then it’s hard to kill,” Caleb Wertz said.

The success of cotton farther north reflects both climate changes and genetically modified strains that can mature in shorter time periods. While many southern states have cotton that grows year-round and can reach waist height, the strains being tried in Colorado only grow for six months. The quicker maturity results in smaller plants to harvest, but Wertz expected they would be as profitable this year as the corn on the rest of the farm.

The initial results of the research in Baca County also showed signs of promise. While the 2017 trial only had two varieties survive long enough to be harvested, Jenkins said five of the 15 varieties tested grew this summer. Jenkins said the crop might have succeeded even more if not for the challenges of protecting it from vaporized herbicides.

“If it can be shown to be fairly reliable, as far as both irrigated and dry land cropping systems, I think it will have a place. There are certain benefits of having that broad leaf crop in the rotation that I think southeast Colorado could benefit from,” Jenkins said.

Another challenge was harvesting the cotton when there were no industrial infrastructure in the state. Last year, Wertz used a customized machine and a crew of workers from Texas to harvest, which didn’t happen until close to Christmas. Jenkins said the crop in the study was too small to attract any help picking it.

Wertz purchased his own harvester this year with the intent of pursuing the crop long-term. The harvester turns out 6-foot-tall modules after running through the field for around half an hour. The bale will be sent more than three hours away to the nearest cotton gin in Kansas for refinement and preparation for sale.