It’s dry in some of the southern U.S. states. Dr. Ken Lege, a cotton specialist from Texas A & M AgriLife Extension, said this is typically a drier time of the year in the South.
“This is typically when we have our driest conditions. It’s this time of year, so it’s not the time to panic just yet. We think about this time last year, we were almost in panic mode, very similar to where we are now with some dry conditions, wondering if we’ll be able to get the crops in. And then we had some timely planting rains and frequent rains throughout the year, throughout last season. So just because it’s dry now, that doesn’t seem to be correlated with what the weather is going to do during the season, thankfully.”
He said the dry weather isn’t as surprising as the temperatures.
“What’s really surprising here lately is this roller-coaster ride of temperatures, right? We got 90s, and then 50s, and then back up to the 90s, and, gosh, it’s March. It should be in the 70s, right? What do they say about Texas weather? If you don’t like it, just wait a few minutes. It’ll change. I think it’s coming true. This is nothing out of the ordinary. We’ve seen these sorts of patterns before. It’s just, I guess, as we age, we have less tolerance for it, right?”
Given the weather and all the surrounding challenges in agriculture, there are steps cotton growers can take to give themselves the best chance to succeed despite the volatility.
“One of those is variety choice, and our data shows that for dry land, making a good choice or a bad choice may be a matter of 70 pounds per acre or $47 per acre. So, on dry land, that’s the difference between potential success and potential disaster. On irrigated, that figure rises to about a half a bale difference between your top-performing variety and your bottom-performing variety. Just one decision can make a half-a-bale difference, and that equates to about $168 per acre, again.”
In addition to production, it’s important to choose varieties that perform well over time.
“One decision can point towards success, and the other decision may lead to disaster. So, this is the time of year that growers need to really weigh those performance differences and really study not only the variety performance, but the consistency of that performance. And I have some resources on the website at Lubbock.tamu.edu to help with that. I just published a fact sheet looking at yield stability, and I put together a pick list, and a promising list of varieties in various production situations.”