Agricultural News
Oklahoma Cotton Specialist Guardedly Optimistic Following 2011 Drought
Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:30:01 CDT
Any way you slice it, last year was a disaster for cotton producers in southwest Oklahoma says Dr. Randy Bowman, director of OSU's Southwest Research and Extension Center near Altus.
Record heat and drought destroyed well over three quarters of the Oklahoma crop. The state only produced about 70,000 bales off of 70,000 standing acres. Approximately 415,000 acres had originally been planted.
"That is the lowest production and the smallest acreage harvested in the state of Oklahoma since 1894," Boman said. "It was an absolute killer. Thank goodness we had a great crop insurance program."
While crop insurance may have softened the blow to farmers, it did nothing for those who make a living off of serving the farmer
"Of course it's been a really tough year for a lot of the folks who provide inputs to the industry. Also for the folks who work with the gins. It's been an absolute disaster," Boman said.
For those able to weather last year's conditions, Boman said, there is a ray of hope on the horizon for this year's season.
"The good news coming into 2012 is we had some pretty decent rains in October, November and December in the southwest corner of the state and this really helped out. Actually it was more normal. We had a normal amount and normal distribution. So we ended up with six to eight inches around. It helped with the establishment of winter crops and cover crops for a lot of these fields."
He said that rains in the first two and a half months of 2012 have been a little on the sparse side, but forecasts are showing chances of significant rain across Oklahoma for the next few days.
The short term optimism, however, is counterbalanced by climatological data that is not quite so rosy, Boman says.
"The climatology doesn't look good, still. They're telling us that we could have some similar issues like what we had last year, but the good news is we're in a lot better shape this time of year than what we were last year."
The worries about adequate water supplies aren't limited to dry land farms, Boman says. He said producers with irrigated acres are just as worried because water supplies are so tight.
"We really have to have some serious rainfall up in the North Fork of the Red River watershed and that has to occur, hopefully, pretty soon. Also, we've got some aquifers around in the southwest corner of the state-the Blaine Gypsum around the Hollis area--that's depleted and seriously low. Also the Tillman Terrace in Tillman County is not in very good shape, so we really need to get some rainfall for these water resources to be recharged."
With all the failed acres last year, Boman says producers may not be in such bad shape when it comes to fertilizer this year. He encourages producers to really put some effort into soil sampling to make maximum use of retained nutrients in the soil
"We've got a lot of residual fertility out there. A lot of guys need to be out there doing some deep sampling looking not only at the top zero to six, but also the six to 24-inch depth to see exactly how much is there. We've done a lot of this on our research farms and I've seen some other producers in the irrigation district around Altus, I've seen some of their data and it depends upon what they applied pre-plant and any potential catch crop that they may have planted after the cotton was failed. We're seeing 80 to 140 pounds of residual nitrogen out there. The phosphorus is going to be there, too, because we haven't had enough precipitation really to cause any issues with that.
Another consideration producers should be evaluating now, Boman says, is seed selection. He said most of the variety trials failed last year without producing significant data.
"We probably need to go back and look at the data from 2009, 2010 to kind of get an idea of what to do. And there's several good varieties out there that fit western Oklahoma and southwest Oklahoma in general depending upon if you want to go with irrigated or with dry land."
Boman says the National Cotton Council estimates Oklahoma farmers will plant 375,000 acres this year. He thinks the estimate is in the ballpark, but may be on the high side. He says a lot will depend on rainfall totals over the next six weeks before planting.
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