LUBBOCK — Cotton growers on the South Plains have been battling weather seemingly all season, so a clear and warm October would come as a blessing.
More recently, the issue was the two weeks in late September with cool temperatures and heavy cloud cover. Still, if October stays warm and sunny then cotton growers, an average, are expecting a decent year.
“It has been a roller coaster,” said Steve Verrett, president of Plains Cotton Growers Inc. “But what I’m hearing from most folks is that we’re still in pretty good shape.
“People are saying it’s not going to be that big giant crop we may have thought it was going to be, but it’s still going to be a very good crop” Verrett said. “That’s the best way I know to sum it up.”
Verrett looked at some numbers and said the 41 counties that make up the Plains Cotton Growers area the past 10 years produced an average of 3.65 million bales of cotton a year.
The latest project Verrett saw for this year had the high plains producing 5.12 million bales.
Verrett said some growers are having a difficult year, no question, but production as a whole this year should be better than average.
What those cooler temperatures in weeks past did was delay the maturity of cotton, said Wayne Keeling, an agronomist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Lubbock.
Although unfortunate, he said it’s not that unusual for this time of year — but for the farmers that had to plant late or replant, this cool spell came at a time where they really needed sun.
“Generally you don’t get that many cloudy days together, but again, I think on the early crop that wasn’t too negative,” said Keeling.
“But this later cotton that needed (sun) every day it could get, it was probably a little negative towards that … By now you pretty much have all the bolls you’re going to make and you just want to mature those out, mature the fiber in those bolls. When you get cloudy days and cooler temperatures you just slow that boll development. The fact that we’re getting so late in the season it’s hard to make that up.”
With a warm October leading into harvest, Keeling said for most it still should reach a good growing point.
Barry Evans, a cotton grower in Swisher County, said this has been his experience. Evans said even the cooler-than-normal weather in August hurt some of their grades.
“Overall we got a good crop in the ground,” said Evans. “We’ll be OK. We just won’t have those top-end grades like we did last year.”
Seth Byrd is a cotton specialist at Lubbock’s Texas AgriLife Extension Service who said it’s been a challenge for farmers all year.
Byrd said the weather was a little too cool around planting time at the beginning of May, and it was followed by a hot period with bad wind.
July was good with rain and sunlight, but in August, Byrd said that rain just kept coming. The rain came with little sunlight, which Byrd said was a challenge. Then in late September , here was the period where cloud cover remained for several weeks.
According to information from the National Weather Service in Lubbock, only .58 of an inch of rain fell on Lubbock County in May, which is when farmers need that original moisture to plan. Then in July, Lubbock received 5.84 inches of rain and in August received 4.85 inches, which is 3.93 and 2.94 inches above average, respectively. This doesn’t take into account sunlight, and Byrd said the heat accumulation they track was way below average in August.
“From the start of this season, from the time we planted, we’ve been battling just to stay on track,” said Byrd. “People planted late, people replanted, and we had late emergence all because of the weather … when you limit light temperature, you really limit the amount of growth and development you can do. You can’t build that fiber, you can’t build that fruitload, you can’t fill bowls when you don’t have sunlight and heat.”
Of course circumstances for each grower vary — this year maybe more so than others. A dry planting season followed by wind and heavy rain scattered throughout the South Plains forced some growers to replant at different times.
Continuous cool temperatures up in the northern panhandle appear to have essentially ended the growing season early, while other growers also in the north but further east in lower elevation have reportedly had very good weather. Scattered weather events have impact growers differently even here in Lubbock.
Source: http://amarillo.com/local-news/