FROM THE MANAGER
Dear members & patrons
April 30 , 2018 marked the end of a very challenging fiscal year . The biggest and most stressful part for all of us was when Hurricane Harvey ’ s wind and rain hammered our crops and the flood waters damaged the homes of many of our friends and customers . While most of our grain and rice crops were already harvested , the huge cotton crop that our producers had nourished and pampered all year took the brunt of the storm . Our cotton producers had about 60 percent of the crop harvested when the storm hit , which amounted to almost 6,000 modules either on our module yards or in the field . We were not prepared for the 20 plus inches of rain and horrific winds . After the storm we saw many modules that were flooded and some even floated away . The same was true for many residences in low lying areas .
We were all devastated by the damage . Cotton crops not harvested were reduced to a total loss in many instances . The one glimmer of hope that everyone held on to was the hurricane insurance coverage United Ag had procured for its producers .
Immediately after the water receded , our management team and gin crews worked around the clock to do their very best to gin cotton in the most efficient manner . Equipment was purchased to better identify wet spots in modules . By bypassing wet modules , we were able to gin more efficiently . Every module was picked up and moisture was monitored , in some cases many times , to eliminate spending hours ginning a wet module when we actually had dry cotton that would gin more efficiently . We continued to assure producers that our insurance would make up for any losses . Our gin management and crews worked 12 or more hours per shift 24 hours a day from August through January . Our employees went to work every day and were not able to take any time off for six months . We did shut the gin down for Thanksgiving and Christmas , but otherwise our employees were doing their best to save every pound of cotton and seed , and gin as efficiently as possible for our cotton producers .
As soon as data was available , our office personnel worked feverishly to start the process of proving losses to our insurance carriers . This was a long tedious process , but thanks to our PCCA bookkeeping system and their personnel we were able to download all of this data to identify losses for our producers who had picked their cotton prior to Harvey . We applaud our members for being very patient and trusting that United Ag , their cooperative , would take care of them . Our policy called for a $ 50,000 deductible , which your board of directors decided that your cooperative would pay , so producers were paid out every cent lost as a result of Harvey . Finally , we were able to agree on the settlement from our carriers and immediately started the process of dispersing the funds to our members . This all sounds easy now , but I imagine there were probably about a million calls to our cotton personnel
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