Agricultural News
Oklahoma's Boll Weevil Watchers Have Found No Weevils in 2010.
Tue, 21 Sep 2010 3:32:16 CDT
No Weevils is the bottom line being talked about by the Oklahoma Boll Weevil Eradication Organization- and reported in their latest board meeting in Hobart.
Meeting Sept. 16, the board recommended upgrading Oklahoma's eradication status to functionally eradicated statewide from active eradication in eastern counties and suppressed status statewide, according to Joe Harris, OBWEO director.
"Texas is doing the same in its north central and western zones," Harris said.
To date, no bollweevils have been caught in the 2010 cotton season, Harris said. Trap density is one to 60 acres in five southwest counties and one to 80 acres elsewhere on approximately 272,000 acres,he reported.
OBWEO directors voted to set the 2011 crop year assessment, which supports the boll weevil eradication program, at $2 per acre of harvested cotton, Harris said.
2010 has been a year of transition for the OBWEO programs's Information Technology department. A new Eradication Manager online program was installed to replace the old system which could no longer be supported.
The new system keys on deployed traps rather than on mapped fields, he said. It employs a single GPS unit and a separate data logger to both mark trap locations and log inspection results including when and by whom traps were inspected each cycle. Trap location is a critical component of the program to look for weevils.
The new Eradication Manager keys on trap locations because across the cotton belt, certified cotton acres, upon which assessments are based, plus farm numbers and Common Land Units (CLU) are already provided to the various eradication programs by periodic updates from the respective USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) state offices.
FSA certified acres have been shown to be as accurate as acres resulting from in-house mapping CLU's, he said, which, along with certified acres data, render in-house mapping an expensive redunduncy.
The resulting maps will show areas containing certified cotton acres along with the location of deployed traps. While the FSA is working to modify all CLU's to show only certified cotton, Harris tells us that they can still map any field where certified and/or harvested acres need to be verified.
Starting up the new system coincided, as a result of the 2008 Farm Bill, with the institution of requirements restricting the availability of federally provided producer information including certified acres, and other data like farm numbers.
To ensure against unauthorized release of information while the new rules are being digested and user friendly compilations of FSA data are being pursued, the agency has limited online Eradication Manager data access to onlly OBWEO personnel. Gins or individual producers desiring specific information are invited to contact the OBWEO Hobart, Ok., office at 580-726-4280.
Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry has redone the Sensitive Crop Viewer section on its website, Harris said. OBWEO is working to incorporate cotton CLUs as well. For next season, the goal is to have early reporting/certification of cotton acres to ensure timely inclusion of CLUs and trap locations onto the system.
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