Specialists Speaking
End-Of-Season Observations ALABAMA Steve M. Brown
I hand-picked cotton yesterday, just one plot in the oldest cotton fertility experiment in the world. One of 14 plots, my assigned two rows by 10 feet were good, and it took 25 minutes to pick everything from fluffy white bolls to those less sightly. I was reminded of two extremes. Years ago I worked with Ray, a scrawny old man who probably weighed less than 130 pounds. He was not given to exaggeration, and I believed his tale of a day in which his (hand) picking crew had a contest, winner-take-all. Whoever picked the most got all the cotton for the day. By mid-afternoon, only Ray and another guy were still picking. Others had quit. Ray finished with 400 pounds, an incredible take, but he finished second. A glance through records suggests daily hand-picking amounts ranging from 200-300 pounds. No consolation for Ray. Fast forward to the 21st century and round roll pickers. When I ride in these massive machines, I’m ever amazed at how they gobble up so much cotton so rapidly. For many years, my family was part of a new church. In the early days, we met in a store front with office, nursery and classrooms on one end and the worship room at the other with a convenience store in between. As I walked into the service one January Sunday in the mid-2000s, I was told, “You need to meet this man.” He was a gray-haired, late 50s, John Deere engineer working on a project he couldn’t disclose. He joined my family for lunch and watched an NFL game. I didn’t pry for information. When he came again the next November, I greeted him with, “I know what you’re working on.” He was part of the team developing the round module harvester. Our 2021 crop was once very good. Rains in late August through early October diminished it. Punished it might be a better description. It’s UGLY in places. By early November, we’ll have a more accurate picture and will hopefully be positively surprised in some places. cottonbrown@auburn.edu
ARKANSAS Bill Robertson
Harvest progress of the 2021 crop continues to echo our season-long delay. However, we appear to be making up some ground slowly as it may be. Cotton harvest as projected by the National Agricultural Statistics Service was 20% complete going into the second week of October. Harvest progress was about half of our five-year average and about one-third behind
last year. The most current NASS yield projection on Oct. 1 estimated yield to average 1,226 pounds per harvested acre, up 52 pounds from last month and up 47 pounds from 2020. This exceeds our previous record yield of 1,185 pounds per harvested acre set in 2019. Harvested acreage is estimated at 470,000 acres, and production is forecast at 1.2 million bales. The 2021 crop is promising record yield prospects along with pricing opportunities of more than $1 per pound for lint. While this is exciting news, input availability and costs for next year will create new and difficult challenges for the 2022 crop. Most growers are well into planning for 2022. Soil samples for fertility as well as nematodes will likely be pulled in great numbers after harvest and stalk destruction are complete. Get cover crops on your radar if they
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COTTON FARMING | NOVEMBER 2021
are not part of your current plan. Look to the University of Arkansas Variety Testing webpage at https://arkansas-variety-testing.uark.edu/ for variety testing results from county and the Official Variety Trials. The Arkansas Crop Management Conference and county production meetings are scheduled to be live events this year, and dates have already been set. Contact your local county Extension agent for details on meetings and other questions you may have. brobertson@uada.edu
FLORIDA David Wright
This growing season was no different than many others with weather issues. Some cotton was planted late as it was dry during April, and 5-7 inches of rain occurred the last days of the month, leaving gullies and ponds in the fields. In general, the growing season was too wet, and management was not often timely for herbicides, fertility applications and growth regulators. Cotton is forgiving in that timing can be off, and you still make a good crop. Cotton that opened early in the bottom of the plant had many hard locked bolls. Dry weather in late September and early October allowed the top crop to open well. Many growers who planted in sandy fields had nitrogen, sulfur and potassium deficiencies. Because of this, yields in some fields were low while others had good yields since moisture was not a limiting factor. Growers are experimenting with slow-release fertilizer on sandy fields. They are finding it can produce higher yields in some years where high rainfall occurs. The cost is higher and may not show an advantage in moderate rainfall years. We continue to make higher yields every year when planting after winter grazing compared to cover crops alone. This is due to recycled nutrients, higher microbial populations, better water infiltration and cotton root stimulation. Even though cotton is grown as a rotation crop for peanuts in the Deep South, cotton prices are getting growers excited about growing the crop again. wright@ufl.edu
GEORGIA Camp Hand
The 2021 production season has been a roller coaster ride for Georgia farmers. Looking back through my contributions to the Specialists Speaking section, you can see the challenges that our growers went through. As I write this Oct. 16, our cotton harvest is only starting. We are beginning to see some fruit and learn lessons from the past year. I encourage growers to examine their crop prior to harvest and evaluate what went right, what went wrong and take some of those lessons into consideration for future years. I was riding a picker with a grower a few days ago, and we discussed how his cotton didn’t have much of a bottom crop. It looked great in the top, but he couldn’t slow it down with plant growth regulators. We discussed some things that could’ve contributed to this, whether it be tarnished plant bugs, timeliness of PGR applications, etc. It helps seeing the crop with bolls set and open. Knowing how the cotton plant develops, we can “count back” and see when certain events may have happened. I hope everyone is staying safe as harvest has begun and is pleased when they get their gin sheets back! Dr. Scott Monfort, University of Georgia peanut agronomist, and I recently started planning county meetings. Be on the lookout for dates in your county or a county near you for the winter and spring. One meeting COTTONFARMING.COM
