Writer: Rod Santa Ana III, (956) 968-5585,r-santaana@tamu.edu
Contact: John Norman, (956) 968-5581,j-norman@tamu.edu
WESLACO – Summer rains are starting to take a toll on the Lower Rio Grande Valley’s multi-million dollar cotton crop and, to add insult to injury, already low world market prices are expected to drop even lower.
“What we need is a good four to six weeks of hot, dry weather to get us through defoliation and harvest,” said John Norman, cotton integrated pest management entomologist with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service in Weslaco.
In anticipation of an early harvest, many growers had expected to start defoliating crops the week after the Fourth of July, but persistent and unpredictable showers have kept growers guessing, fields soggy and defoliation machinery idle.
Rains also have started to cause open fiber damage, Norman said, but to what extent yields will be affected is still difficult to determine.
“During one hard rain,” Norman said, “a grower west of Raymondville reported that his seed cotton was being washed away into a drainage ditch. When cotton gets knocked down to the ground, that entire field is pretty much gone.”
In fields not so heavily hit by rain, Norman suspects, the excessive moisture has also caused seeds in cotton bolls to start sprouting, producing costly and unwanted stains on lint.
A chemical reaction takes place as seed in an open boll sprouts when it receives excessive moisture. That reaction produces a stain much like tea or coffee does when it comes in contact with water. Stained cotton reduces the grade of the lint and grower income, since payments are based on both grade and poundage.
To make matters worse, pressures on the world market will keep cotton prices low, Dr. Carl Anderson, a professor and Extension Service economist in cotton marketing at College Station, reports in his monthly “Cotton Market Comments” newsletter.
“China officials have decided to dump some of their so-called 17 million extra bales of cotton on the world market at whatever price is necessary,” he wrote.
Prices have been hovering at a meager 48 cents per pound, while the break-even price for Valley growers is above 70 cents.
While persistent rains have helped keep populations of whiteflies low, they also have meant a dramatic increase in populations of cotton-damaging boll weevils. Since muddy fields are also keeping growers from applying their routine insecticidal treatments, Norman says, weevils will continue to increase in numbers and cause problems until fields are defoliated and harvested.
Norman says growers can only hope for rain-free weather in the weeks ahead.
“Historical weather data shows that we should be hot and dry until mid-August when tropical activity keeps things wet until the end of September. But the weather has been very unpredictable this year,” he said. “For a while we looked like we’d have early and good yields, but now the weather, like prices, have gone bad.”
On a positive note, Norman says, rains have helped leech soils of salts and reduced irrigation demands on persistently low reservoir levels.
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