Welcome rainfall across West Texas this week has renewed farmers and ranchers’ hopes for a good spring forthcoming and put on hold a drought that has intensified in recent weeks.
Drought conditions have been spreading across the Southwest since last winter. Art Douglas, professor emeritus at Creighton University in Omaha, told attendees at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Convention in Phoenix in early February that a possible transition from La Nina conditions to a weaker El Nino could arrive by summer.
Douglas said U.S. weather patterns over the next three months will be dictated by La Nina. However, equatorial warming could shift drought patterns across North America by late spring and summer. El Nino generally brings more rain to the Southwest.
Mickey Brosig, who ranches in Brown County, said last week that pasture and field conditions were in dire straits. It is little doubt rainfall in recent days went straight into the ground.
Kerr County rancher Ken Whitewood said pastures and fields in the Texas Hill Country were in need of water. Creeks and rivers were very low.
“The rains may have arrived in time to save a winter wheat crop,” Kenny Gully told me. “Our wheat was planted later than some of our neighbor’s crop since we planted in November after the cotton crop was harvested. It was still doing OK.”
Gully, who farms near Eola about 20 miles east of San Angelo, said the area received rainfall in late fall which deposited underground moisture. “We were concerned about losing the subsoil moisture if rainfall didn’t arrive soon.
“Even better, cotton farmers now have the moisture in time for planting season,” he said.
Gully said only about half of his 2017 cotton crop has been ginned. “Some of it remains at the edge of our fields in modules and the rest has been ginned or in wait at the gin yard for processing.”
He said dryland cotton had yields from a bale-plus and 1½ bales per acre. Irrigated cotton fields produced upwards of 3½ bales per acre. “I was hoping for 4 bales per acre, he laughed, but we didn’t quite make it.”
As ginning of the 2017 cotton crop slowly winds down, Texas production could reach a new record.
“Early indications suggest the 2017 cotton crop could total from 305,000 to 307,000 bales across the 12-county Southern Rolling Plains region,” Gully said. “The first time the region broke a record was 2007 when a total of 301,848 bales were produced. We came close in 2014 when a total of 296,611 bales were produced. Otherwise, the five-year average yield is 160,478 bales.”
The Southern Rolling Plains is made up of Tom Green, Runnels, Concho, Coke, Coleman, Brown, McCulloch, Mason, Menard, Irion, Schleicher and southern Taylor counties.
Meanwhile, the USDA Abilene Classing office has graded 898,497 bales for the 2017 season from West Texas which includes the Concho Valley and Big Country. Add 537,238 from Oklahoma and 105,549 from Kansas bringing the Abilene office overall total to 1,541,264 bales from 42 gins for the season.
Source: www.reporternews.com