The cotton harvest in Marana must go on, whether or not any gins are nearby.
This year the management of the Trico Gin, 15315 W. Silverbell Road — Marana's last operating cotton gin — announced the gin would not open this season to process cotton.
But that hasn't stopped the dozen or so cotton farmers left in the area, who are in the midst of harvest season.
"I didn't do business with them, so it hasn't affected my situation," said Arnold Burruel, owner of Burruel and Burruel Farms. The farm, which yields cotton and other crops, is about 3,000 acres.
Harvest season here typically runs from the beginning of October through Thanksgiving.
Even though Burruel didn't gin at Trico, it's sad to see it close, he said.
"It's just another reminder that we're in a dwindling, a shrinking business, agriculture in Arizona," he said.
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John Kai, owner of the Trico Gin, said the closure isn't necessarily permanent.
Most of the cotton it processed came from Kai Farms and its lessees, he said.
"We are not planting a lot of cotton ourselves, so we closed it," he said. "There's such a surplus of cotton on the market that the price has been very, very depressed."
At one time, in the 1960s, more than 100 gins dotted the state of Arizona — 10 of them in Pima County alone, Kai said.
Now there are maybe a dozen in the whole state, he said.
"We were the last of all the cotton gins in the area," he said.
For the last several years, Burruel has taken his cotton to the Anderson Clayton Sunshine Gin in Eloy.
Sunshine Gin manager Greg Sugaski said he worked for the last Anderson Clayton gins that were open in Marana before they transferred all operations to Pinal County. The gins in Pinal County have more modern equipment that can handle larger volumes more efficiently, he said.
Though cotton prices are depressed for now, he suspects there will be a rebound for the commodity in 2009 as corn and grain prices fall.
And Marana cotton isn't going away either, he said.
"Farming in Marana is still doing quite well, relative to other areas in the state," Sugaski said.
Kai remained optimistic as he discussed the historically taught "five C's" of Arizona's economy: copper, cattle, citrus, climate and cotton.
"(Cotton) was originally one of the five C's, and the weather here is good for it, but the market is bad for it," he said. "It'll come back. When the prices get better, we'll open (the gin) up again."