• By Seth Byrd,
Oklahoma State University •
Like any cotton season, 2020 was a roller coaster in Oklahoma, although we tended to avoid the extremes experienced in the two previous years. Coming off a hot and dry 2018 followed by...
In the Texas Permian Basin where vast open land meets the horizon, Bo and Russ Eggemeyer are dedicated to growing white gold. These sixth-generation farmers are taking advantage of new subsurface drip irrigation technology to maximize water-use efficiency across their cotton acres. The brothers also grow varieties bred to deliver a high-yielding, high-quality crop. This is their story.
The West and the Southwest are areas of the Cotton Belt that typically experience water shortages. Instead of giving up on trying to irrigate their crops, cotton farmers have adopted systems to make the most of the water that they have.
“California is the only state that has to rely fully on irrigation to meet crop water needs,” says Bob Hutmacher, University of California Extension cotton specialist. “We are growing cotton in a dry environment with essentially no chance of rainfall during most of our cotton-growing season. Arizona growers may get growing-season water from monsoon rains, but there is little chance of that for most California producers.
“In the past, when we had more consistent, favorable water supplies, better quality water, and weren’t competing as much with permanent crops, furrow irrigation was a typical system used by cotton farmers. Today, we still have large acreages of level basin irrigation – a type of border system – on land well suited for it, such as the finer-textured lake bottom land in the San Joaquin Valley. For these specific soil types, soil characteristics allow this ground to be irrigated quite efficiently at low costs with the level basin system.”
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