Football season is still three months away, but the other night I ran across the movie Friday Night Lights and had to watch it…again. The high school football drama is set in Odessa, Texas, where “the game” is the...

At the end of the 2010 crop year, China’s ending stocks (cotton still on hand from that and previous crop years) had reached a very low level of only 10.6 million bales — 23 percent or roughly three months...

Southern States Cooperative, a Richmond, Va.-based farm supply and service cooperative, recently launched a new precision ag program for its farmers across the Southeast. The three-tier program features packages – Discover, Evaluation and Analysis – designed to provide farmers with beginner, intermediate and advanced-level precision ag opportunities. “Communication among the farmer, salesperson and precision ag personnel ensures that everyone is on the same page as to program expectations and timing of any particular service,” says Dave Swain, Southern States’ manager of precision ag. “If the farmer has a crop consultant who performs functions such as scouting, Southern States can provide the farmer with data or information, such as imagery, that the farmer can then provide to his consultant. The farmers own the data, and Southern States will not share their data with any entity without their written permission.” Three Programs Available The entry-level option features precision ag basics and allows growers to “dip a toe” into the waters of farm technology. It’s a season-long program designed for those who want to learn how agronomy technology helps provide information to make better crop management decisions.

ARKANSAS The first 40 days in the life of a cotton plant sets the foundation for yield and fiber quality potential for the season. This includes the period from planting to squaring. Cool temperatures or competition from pests can delay...

Seven-plus bales was the high. Cotton yield and quality records are made to be broken, and that’s just what FiberMax cotton growers did in 2015 to qualify for the elite FiberMax One Ton Club. During a celebration in Lubbock, Texas, Bayer recently honored 127 members who qualified for the One Ton Club during the 2015 crop year. The 2015 qualifiers included 40 new members and 87 returning qualifiers, making the total number of FiberMax One Ton Club members 848. The highest yield for those who qualified for the FiberMax One Ton Club in 2015 – 3,717 pounds, or 7.7 bales, per acre – was recorded on 32 acres by Vance and Mandie Smith, of Big Spring, Texas. The seven-year members of the One Ton Club topped their previous record by 400 pounds per acre. For the Smiths, that’s more than six times the Texas average in 2015, which was 614 pounds per acre. The highest acreage winners, Eric and Christy Seidenberger, of Garden City, Texas, averaged 2,054 pounds per acre on 564 acres. What makes the numbers posted by the 127 FiberMax One Ton Club members more remarkable is that 2015 was marked by rains that delayed or prevented cotton planting in some areas, notes Jeff Brehmer, U.S. product manager for FiberMax cotton.

Focus On Cotton Webcast Features Precision Ag Data Field observations and data have always been a critical part of agriculture. However, the widespread adoption of data collection – and real-time analytics by industry leaders and local growers alike – illustrates the...

The National Cotton Council continues to work with Congress and the Administration to ensure farmers are not further burdened by over-reaching regulations. Any concerns conveyed recently to Congress? Those testifying at a recent House Agri-culture Committee subcommittee hearing agreed there were a number of factors driving up production costs, including increased prices for inputs, machinery and new technologies. The witnesses also agreed that another factor was the dramatic increase in the number of regulations and policies put in place by federal agencies, especially EPA. They explained that crop protection businesses that support American agriculture recently have seen serious deviations from the regular order, transparency and scientific integrity of EPA’s risk assessment-based pesticide review process. The witnesses urged Congress and stakeholders to work with government agencies, including EPA, to ensure that no policies are enacted that would prevent farmers and ranchers from economically producing food and fiber. They also emphasized that due to the rising costs and the recent collapse in net farm income, farmers and ranchers will need every tool available to help minimize their production costs. The witnesses’ testimonies are at https://1.usa.gov/1VBYrH6.

Sporting a faded, floppy-brimmed fedora, Aunt Blanche would lay on the horn of her bob truck even though my older brother, Mike, and I were waiting for her on our front porch. We grabbed our new 9-foot-long Bemis Blue...

Overhead seed houses are valuable for short-term seed storage, wet seed storage and gins with limited yard space. With recent design improvements, overhead seed houses can also provide a highly efficient method for loading trucks from flat-storage houses. When fully...

On April 12, Oklahoma Farm Bureau President Tom Buchanan urged Congress to hold the Environmental Protection Agency accountable for its burdensome regulations and aggressive tactics against U.S. farmers and ranchers. In testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund, Waste Management and Regulatory Oversight, Buchanan explained how Oklahoma’s farmers and ranchers are affected by the EPA’s regulations, especially its Waters of the United States rule. “After carefully studying the proposed rule, we at Farm Bureau concluded that the rule’s vague and broad language would define ‘waters of the United States’ to include countless land areas that are common in and around farm fields and ranches across the countryside. These are areas that don’t look a bit like water,” Buchanan said in his testimony. “They look like land, and they are farmed, but by defining them as ‘waters of the U.S.’ the rule would make it illegal to farm, build a fence, cut trees, build a house, or do most anything else there without first asking permission of the federal government and navigating a costly and complex permitting regime.” Buchanan also highlighted EPA’s misleading advocacy for its own rule, using public relations and social media campaigns to garner support.

Hands-on operators continue the family legacy. By Carroll Smith Editor Ginger and Sharion Croom spent a portion of their childhood growing up in a small white farmhouse that stands about 100 feet from the shop at L&G Farms in Southeast Missouri. After...

With U.S. cotton facing ever-stronger competition from other countries’ growths and from man-made fibers, the National Cotton Council believes it is imperative that our industry increase efforts to prevent lint contamination. What steps have been initiated? Earlier this year, the NCC re-established its Quality Task Force to monitor ongoing quality issues and stay abreast of lint contamination incident reports. Increased complaints from textile mills are threatening U.S. cotton’s reputation. The NCC took another step when it recently amplified its existing contamination prevention policy — directing the task force to coordinate and oversee the creation and implementation of a comprehensive and effective contamination prevention program for cotton producers and gins. This effort is in collaboration with the NCC’s American Cotton Producers, the National Cotton Ginners Association (NCGA), and other producer and ginner interest organizations. harvest cotton not plasticAre plastics still the major concern? Plastics continue as the major contamination source whether from shopping bags and black plastic mulch to irrigation poly pipe and module wraps. We are urging producers to be diligent in removing from their fields all forms of plastic throughout the season and especially prior to harvest. Producers should try to eliminate other potential contaminants, such as seed coat fragments, excess bark and oil/grease. More and more textile mills are using expensive

As consumers continue to incorporate more fitness into their daily routines, they want to be able to wear the same clothing not just during sports but also during everyday activities, such as grocery shopping or to the office. Cotton...

ARKANSAS Establishing a healthy stand of cotton is the first step toward a successful season. Cotton does not tolerate difficulties encountered during its first weeks of growth very well. Variety selection and seed quality have a lasting effect on the...

In poker, when the chips are low and the stakes are high, a player may decide to take a risk and go “all in” to stay in the game. Farming has sometimes been compared to gambling. You put up...