Specialists Speaking
2021 Cotton Season Recap ALABAMA Steve M. Brown
The U. S. Department of Agriculture estimates for the 2021 Alabama cotton crop have remained slightly above 900 pounds per acre since the initial August report. Maybe they are close, but I don’t know HOW they make their guesses. Cotton production in the state is so incredibly diverse! Significant concentrations of cotton exist in the sandy coastal plain of South Alabama and the rolling red fields of the Tennessee Valley in the north. Elsewhere, there are scattered pockets with river bottom soils, others in proximity to real mountains, a few die-hard acres in the hard red dirt of the Piedmont and the heavy, shrink-swell clays of the Black Belt. Some prime production is among houses and/or large water bodies. Urban encroachment pressures production in multiple places. Rainfall patterns vary widely as well. The highest annual precipitation is typically in Southwest Alabama, parts of which received more than 80 inches of rainfall this year and way too much from late July through early October. My field and yield observations are from small- and large-scale research plots and farmer visits. A picker seat is a good vantage point from which to assess a crop. Unfortunately, I’ve seen fields that look great from the road but with little cotton below the knee or in some cases, below mid-thigh. Excessive late-season rains took much of the crop in too many places. Generally, yields are better to the north and better later than earlier. I’ve seen yields ranging from 300-2,000 pounds per acre. My guess is that we lost 30% of the crop we once had, primarily through adverse weather at season’s end. The last 40 days have a profound impact on our crop. Season’s end compels a review. What worked well … or didn’t? How did we fare with pest management? Should we adjust nitrogen or plant growth regulator use? Did weather simply overwhelm the best intended or executed plans? In terms of variety selection, we are in period without a single dominant option, which is reason to study trial data and recap sheets. Going forward, we will likely plant a true mix of varieties. Year’s end also compels a rest. It’s needed here. cottonbrown@auburn.edu
ARKANSAS Bill Robertson
The 2021 season continues to surprise most with very good yield prospects, a great price and a good stretch of favorable harvest days. Many felt we would still be picking cotton at Thanksgiving in Arkansas. Onboard module pickers and favorable weather helped many reach the finish line by early November. The National Agricultural Statistics Service November Crop Production report estimated Arkansas production at 1.2 million bales. Based on conditions as of Nov. 1, yield is expected to average 1,226 pounds lint per acre on 470,000 harvested acres. This yield projection surpasses our previous high of 1,185 pounds lint per harvested acre established in 2019. With about 25% of our projected crop graded in early November, our grades are good. Greater than 90% of the bales classed had a color grade of 41 or better. Micronaire averaged 4.5 with less than 5% in the discount range. Leaf is averaging just shy of 3.5. There is little reason to expect this trend will not continue for most of our crop. Plans for next year are falling in place. Input availability and costs are part of the process and will create new and difficult challenges. Fertilizer
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COTTON FARMING | DECEMBER 2021
prices are center stage now, but other inputs will soon follow. Planting seed availability should not be an issue. Evaluate the performance of newer varieties to the ones you grow. Compare notes with onfarm variety testing programs near you and the official variety trial or OVT conducted by Dr. Fred Bourland. This will help provide information needed to select the best varieties for your operation. Visit the University of Arkansas System Division of Ag Variety Testing webpage at https://arkansas-variety-testing.uark.edu/ for variety testing results from county trials and the OVTs. Contact your local county Extension agent for updates on this season’s testing programs and to get details regarding upcoming production meetings. brobertson@uada.edu
ARIZONA Randy Norton
As we come to the end of the 2021 season, we can look back and evaluate what went well and what did not. As of this writing, yields have been reported as relatively good. Overall performance has been at or slightly above average, with some reports of Upland yields surpassing 4 bales per acre and Pima yields surpassing 3 bales per acre. We are currently seeing unprecedented lint prices available to growers, with Upland reaching well above $1 per pound and Pima cotton well above $2 per pound. However, we are also seeing prices for fertilizer reach extremely high levels. There is talk about availability, or lack thereof, of inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides for the upcoming season. Rising costs and availability of equipment, fuel and other resources all add uncertainty to the future. These are real challenges facing our industry right now. However, we have faced similar challenges in the past and will be up to these as well. Implementing sound management practices proven to maximize the production efficiencies will be critical to remaining successful. Making decisions that over years of experience have been effective in your production system will help provide stability. Seek out and use resources from research-based experience. University Cooperative Extension Services and reliable industry sources across the Cotton Belt will also assist in providing stability to your system during unstable times. As an industry, we will move through these challenges and learn valuable lessons that will make us more resilient in the future. rnorton@cals.arizona.edu
CALIFORNIA Bob Hutmacher
One of the most significant challenges for the 2021 California growing season was limited irrigation water availability. Most production areas in the San Joaquin Valley had serious limits on available surface irrigation from water districts. In areas with limited groundwater availability, there was less water to produce crops. In many cases, cotton was one of the deficit-irrigated crops. In areas able to rely on wells, growers had more ability to consider if they wanted to fully irrigate or deficit irrigate. Where deficit irrigation had to be practiced during the early to midseason, the effects meant smaller plants, earlier harvest readiness and easier defoliation. To some extent, these effects could be pluses, but the downside of deficit irrigations is often reduced yields. This year’s observations also pointed out a lot of yield variability across both Pima and Acala/Upland fields. This resulted in early problems with COTTONFARMING.COM
