Video: New Cotton Gin Helps Local Farmers Save

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BROOKSVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – It’s harvest time and local farmers are able to cut costs thanks to the newly opened Bogue Chitto Cotton Gin. 

“It’s something the community needed. As you look at the cotton acreage in the county. So we’re seeing very a positive response from the farmers,” says Jay Hoover of the Bogue Chitto Cotton Gin.

The Bogue Chitto Cotton Gin in Brooksville couldn’t have come at a better time for local farmers. Cotton Farmer Paul Spurgen of Spurgen Farms says the new cotton gin will raise production.

“We’re glad to see it here. We hope it goes well. We’re going to have to continue to support the gin. It needs 20,000 bales a year to operate. So we’re going to try to give it 20,000 bales a year so it can stay here,” says Spurgen.

At Spurgen Farms technology has allowed them to create cotton bales can weigh up to 5,000 pounds.  Now with the Bogue Chitto Cotton Gin right around the corner, they’re able to save thousands of dollars in overhead costs.

“I was taking it to Hamilton, Alabama which is 50 something miles north of here. Now I can’t say anything bad about them. They were good but this gin, I think, is going to be better because of it being new,” says Spurgen.

The number of gins in the state has dropped from 120 to about 70 in the last 10 years. The cost of getting a crop to market cut deeply into profits. Now local farmers are looking forward to better bottom line.

“It’s a new technology gin, a new gin. The yields and turnouts will be better for us. The time of ginning, we’re not going to have to leave our cotton sitting for a long time because it’s going to gin 50 or 60 bales of cotton per hour,” says Spurgen.

Noxubee and its surrounding counties were once among the state’s biggest cotton producers, and they could be again in the not-so-distant future.

This is the first new gin in the state in more than 20 years.