The Challenges Of Living And Growing Cotton On The Southern High Plains
ROB MILLS
PERRYVILLE, MISSOURI
Growing up, I sat next to my dad many, many nights, as he talked about topics and issues, big and small. Occasionally Texas would come up. He’d tell me “Robert, there’s a provision in the Texas Constitution that says Texas can secede from the United States whenever it wishes to do so!” Well, I checked that out. It’s not true. Fine. But there is one observation that is correct without a doubt about the Lone Star state: it’s big enough to be its own country.
Located in the western part of this mini nation is the community of Shallowater. With a population of just 3,000, this High Plains town sits in the shadow of Lubbock, a college town of over 250,000 that is the home of Texas Tech University. The school adds another 40,000 plus residents to the city nine months a year.
Two of Shallowater’s most prominent residents are Mr.& Dr. Lewis, aka Clay & Katie. Anchoring a household of four, which includes two children who are just beginning the lifelong process of mastering the English language, under the Lewis roof you’ll find a husband and wife who openly state their purpose in life as professionals is the success of farmers. Those men and women who labor in an area that has the Dust Bowl as its legacy, and where the Lewis’ have set up shop.
Let’s look at this couple, where the old saying “opposites attract” describes them well.
First…
THE HUSBAND
Clay Lewis, the head of the household, introduces himself as a man who identifies with the civil religion of Texas: football. “I grew up in a six-man Texas town”, he told MAFG over the phone on a late May morning, with his university professor wife at his side, and toddler son in his lap. A graduate of Meadow High School, he described the part of Texas they reside in as the Southern High Plains, with the New Mexico border 90 minutes to the west, and the mega metro area of Dallas-Ft. Worth five plus hours to the east.
Clay describes his adult life as having had two primary locations: the field and Texas A&M. When asked “You went to Texas Tech right,” he responded, “good Lord no, I’m an Aggie!” He went on to describe his early days. “I worked in the field for as long as I can remember. Two weeks after I graduated from high school, I moved to College Station. I got my degrees at A&M and worked for several years assisting an instructor there. When I left College Station, I went right back to the field.”
No stops in corporate America for this guy. He met Dr./Mrs. Lewis in College Station as well.
He notes that when you say “field” in his part of the world, there’s only one crop to be found in a west Texas field. “This is “cotton country,” he says emphatically, adding “the reason being it’s the only crop we can grow in this part of the world. We routinely have 90-day drought periods. This past winter, one stretch was over 150 days. Cotton is the only crop that can stand up to that kind of climate and survive. And it’s a battle every year to make it happen.”
Clay says in their part of Texas “the weather is odd. You go for two thirds of the year without any rain here. There are times you don’t know, day in day out, whether you’re going to plant. Right now, I’ve got 14 days to decide whether to plant or not. I mean these decisions are literally when you bet your future on the choice you make. And even if you get any moisture, it’s here today gone tomorrow. It’s hard not to be negative.”
So why is this part of the world such an ordeal to navigate?
It’s easier to understand the challenges when you know the history of the land where their farm is located. As mentioned earlier, “The Dust Bowl,” the disaster that ravaged the Great Plains from the mid 30’s to the early 40’s, brought agriculture to a standstill in the world Clay & Katie occupy today. And the echoes of it are still evident in west Texas.
“You can see farmhouses, barns that were abandoned still standing today,” Clay says. “The damage that was done back then, and the weather that we have today, all of the factors that created that disaster still exist today.” Like the wind. “The wind still rages,” he says.
Now, next up is…
THE WIFE
Katie Lewis comes from a less traumatized part of the state of Texas. Five hundred miles plus from where she resides now, as you make your way to the Gulf Coast lies the three-stop light town of Taft, where Katie grew up. Whereas her husband resided in the remnant of a natural disaster, his future wife chilled near the shore.
“I remember early on the fisherman and the beach people,” she said. She also recalled her calling in life didn’t wait very long to manifest in her thoughts. “Going back to when I was three or four years old, science was already making the wheels turn in my mind. I went to high school in Portland, which is about 10 miles from our family home. That’s where I encountered the best high school chemistry teacher anyone could ever have,” adding that teacher encounter, and her exposure to the world of science “got me excited” early on in her life.
As a teen she also threw herself into her love for rodeo, becoming a part of the high school team. But when graduation day at Portland High School came and went, she pursued her real passion, enrolling as a chemistry major at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, located just north of the city named after Sam. During her time there with the help of numerous instructors who kept adding fuel to her career pursuit fire, she connected with the world of undergrad research. Continuing the process of the student finding their pathway, her time at Sam Houston helped her define what she was after. “I discovered that I was just passionate about ag research,” she said.
Katie graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Sam Houston State. Her journey had just begun. She then made the short trek to College Station, where she studied for the next several years, obtaining her masters’ and doctoral degrees in Soil Science from Texas A&M University.
Following graduation and marriage, Clay & Katie migrated just down the road to the Southern High Plains of Texas and set up house and family near Lubbock in Shallowater. The “Aggies” of A&M gave her the bulk of her education, but the “Red Raiders” of Texas Tech provided her a professorship opportunity, hiring her in September 2014 as a joint appointee with the Texas A&M AgriLife Research program. She is formally known today as Katie Lewis, PH. D, Professor of Soil Fertility. With two small children, Kadence age five and Cade age three, she spends her time on campus balancing research and teaching, while at home she and Clay raise their children, and fight the daily battle that is the legacy of the Grapes of Wrath.
THE THINGS THAT REMAIN
Manifesting on April 14th, 1935, The Dust Bowl is described as “the greatest man-made ecological disaster in the history of the United States.” (1) Taking place from the heart of the depression era to the beginning of the U.S. involvement in WW2, brought on in part by poor farming practices, it involved years of drought and land-based hurricane like wind. It’s effect on the prairie land from North Dakota to Texas was comparable to a biblical judgment: complete and utter devastation of the land it struck.
The battle between the farmer and the environment in west Texas continues today, with Clay Lewis’ land being ground zero. He and his peers use a soil conservation technique that didn’t exist when the Dust Bowl ravaged their country. It’s called “sand fighting.” It’s a method used by farmers to protect the land and its crops. It involves dragging the surface of the soil, to toughen the surface, making it less susceptible to the erosion that comes from the wind.
Clay describes “sand fighting” as “the modern reality of life, in fact it’s a way of survival for those of us who farm here. Our climate is known as “semi-arid” which means it’s half desert. The High Plains are unique because our soil is a mixture of sand and dirt. We battle drought and the wind, we battle moisture when it does rain, because it turns our land into beach sand. We live in a world that sees half the rainfall we would have gotten fifteen years ago. A generation ago, it was the same equation for those farmers. It’s shocking when you think about it. Try living with it,” he said.
It's Katie’s business to find a way out of this mess. The landmass of Texas is just short of ten percent of the entire U.S. Its population is the same proportion, approaching 32 million in a nation of 340 million. The Texas Water Development Board released a report in 2022, warning of water shortages in the state by 2030 if action isn’t taken. This would affect everything within the borders of Texas: farmland and cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and the Lewis’ backyard.
The report specifically went on to say that the state needed to come up with additional water supplies and avoid a severe Dust Bowl like drought, or the world of 2030 in Texas will be one of water shortages. When Katie puts on her Dr. Lewis hat, those wheels that have been turning in her brain since she watched SpongeBob, say there’s a way out of this mess.
“There are ways to convert alternative water sources into an irrigation resource, there are Soil & Water Conservation systems that can be put into place, rotating crops to lessen their yearly impact on the soil,” she observes. State leaders say the plumbing infrastructure of Texas is archaic, that it loses up to 30% of the drinking water it distributes to its customers, on its way to their homes.
Whatever ideas are out there, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller was recently quoted as saying “Texans need to quit whining, put on their big boy pants and figure something out. This is Texas!” There’s one more issue to throw in the pot: the dispute with Mexico over the terms of the 1944 Rio Grande Water Treaty it signed with the United States.
Mexico has been accused of withholding up to 1,750,000 acre-feet of water from the United States and Texas over the past five years and beyond, adding tension over water supply issues, to the ones that already exist between the U.S. and the Mexican government.
The Los Angeles Times headline from April 11th, 2025, says it all: “Inside the war over water brewing at the U.S.-Mexican Border.”
Water has become a national security issue.
Hearing all this, you must ask this question…
WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE?
At the 28th Annual National Conservation Systems Cotton & Rice Conference held in Memphis earlier this year, the Lewis’ put their past, present & future wisdom into seminar form, speaking on the subject that is their wheelhouse: “The Longevity of Agriculture on the Texas High Plains.” Speaking about the legacy of the land, its present challenges and just what the future may hold, Mr. & Dr. Lewis laid out the reality and complexity of the world they live in. In conclusion, the question is always the same according to Clay.
“How are we going to figure out how to keep this all going? Because it we can’t, the dream dies. That’s the reality of it,” he concludes.
His wife sounds a realistic, but optimistic tone about the days ahead. “We have these conversations every year. The people who live here have roots in this part of the country that go back generations. They’ll figure it out.”
In the meantime, Clay & Katie have their lives to live. “We have our family, friends, other interests. But we eat, sleep and breathe the world of agriculture,” Katie says.
Clay sums it all up: “It’s extremely personal.”
You get the impression with Mr. & Dr. Lewis that failure is not an option.
SOURCES
- Oklahoma Digital Prairie “digitalprairieok.net”. ∆
ROB MILLS
MAFG STAFF WRITER