30 BULLETIN" 1467, U. S, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
SALE OF ASSOCIATION SEED, CROP OF 1924 
The Acala Cotton Growers' Association of the Coachella Valley 
continued the policy of saving seed only from clean land planted 
with rogued seed. Since only Acala cotton was grown in 1924, there 
was no chance of mixture through cross-pollination, and there were 
now 4,464 acres of Acala in the valley from which the seed could 
qualify on this basis. 
Not all of the valley growers belonged to the association, many 
preferring to sell their seed to the oil mill in order to get their money 
immediately. In 1924, however, the oil-mill market for seed opened 
very low and many more growers considered joining the association. 
The association, as has been stated, is a nonprofit organization and 
all the funds collected must be distributed to the growers at the close 
of the season's business. This leaves no provision for the cost of 
holding the seed in the fall, until it can be sold. Since a consider- 
able expenditure is necessary in order to save the seed, the associa- 
tion has had to borrow money, using the seed as security, in order 
to tide over until funds begin to come in from the sale of the seed. 
The cotton grower usually sells his seed to the gin for milling 
purposes and receives for it a few dollars more than the cost of the 
ginning. In the West the average price of mill seed at the gin is 
perhaps $30 a ton, and since a bale of cotton gins out about 
1,000 pounds of seed, the grower receives about $8 in cash in addi- 
tion to his ginning charge of about $7 a bale. If the seed is not 
sold to the gin but is saved to be sold as planting seed the next 
spring, the ginning charge must be met in some other way. Since 
the growers had been in the habit of meeting their ginning charges 
by the sale of their seed, the association had been borrowing money 
to pay the ginning charges when the seed was saved for planting 
purposes. This system also allowed more seed to be saved. 
In 1924 mill seed at the gin opened at $18 a ton, and after paying 
the ginning charge on his "bale the grower received only about $2 
cash for his seed, instead of the usual $8. Since the association had 
been paying the ginning charges for its members and returning to 
them $60 or more per ton the next spring, many additional growers 
joined the association at this time, and the association saved for 
planting purposes 1,168 tons of seed. This represented seed from 
about 2,336 bales. 
But the low oil-mill market, which brought many new members, 
made it much more difficult for the association to borrow funds to 
finance the saving of the seed. Ginning charges alone amounted 
to $14 per ton of seed, and enough stenciled sacks to contain a ton 
of seed cost $4. These two charges alone, $18 a ton. were equal to 
the oil-mill value of the seed, without taking into consideration labor 
for cleaning and sacking, hauling, advertising, etc. 
It was found that an investment of $25 or more per ton was neces- 
sary in order to save the seed for planting purposes, and for the 
1,168 tons of seed saved by the association in 1924 this amounted to 
about $30,000. In previous years, with a normal oil-mill valuation 
of $30 a ton, the problem had not been so difficult. But in 1924, 
to procure the $30,000 necessary to save the seed for planting pur- 
poses, when the seed had an oil-mill valuation of only $21,000, was 
