Duane Howell

Duane Howell of Lubbock, a native of the Texas High Plains and free-lance cotton writer, has written cotton articles for DTN since the 1980s.

Howell grew up on a dryland cotton and grain sorghum farm in Lynn County south of Lubbock. He studied agriculture at Texas Tech three years, quit a year to farm his granddad's place, returned to Tech and graduated with a B.A. degree in journalism in 1953. He was sports editor of La Ventana, the Tech annual, his senior year.

Howell was a farm reporter at the Abilene Reporter-News for four years and became farm editor of The Avalanche-Journal in Lubbock in 1957. He retired from the newspaper in 1996. Earlier, he published a weekly cotton letter that was circulated throughout the U.S. and in 33 foreign countries. He has traded cotton futures as a speculator and has a hedging account for dryland and irrigated farms in Lynn County.