OKLAHOMA Although late, the Oklahoma cotton crop has made good progress in the past several weeks. A significant amount of irrigated cotton was on time with respect to cutout during the last half of August. Even though the crop pretty...

Missouri’s Rone Family Strives For Efficiency By Tommy Horton Defoliating and harvesting a cotton crop is like painting a picture. Unless everything is mixed together perfectly, the finished product won’t be that good. Some have even suggested that the entire exercise...

I was born in England, a banker for awhile, finally achieving my boyhood dreams by getting my wings. Airplanes and unique opportunities took me many places before I ended up in cotton country – Lubbock, Texas. After an interesting...

Even though it’s more than three months away, it’s not too early to start talking about the Beltwide Cotton Conferences (BWCC), scheduled for Jan. 5-7 in New Orleans. If you’ll check out the October issue of Cotton Farming, you’ll find a preview that gives a quick look at some of the key issues that will be addressed. Even though the conference only lasts three days, it will deliver a lot of information for any farmer, consultant, Extension agent/specialist, university official or industry sales representative. Granted, the Beltwide differs from what we remember it to be in the 1980s, 1990s and on through 2013. But, the conference is still a valuable link to information for any person involved in the cotton industry. In fact, the Consultants Conference, which lasts for a day and a half, is one of the best overviews you’ll find. If the Consultants Conference were the only event you attended during these three days, you would have gained access to a comprehensive look at the most important issues confronting cotton production. The Consultants Conference, in fact, will kick off the Beltwide with a half day session on Jan. 5, beginning at noon. Then, it will conclude with an all-day session on Jan. 6. You name the topic, and you’ll find it when you join the consultants for this meeting.

Valley Introduces Airless Tire For More Efficient Irrigation Producers tired of getting flat tires on their center pivots now have a new option: The Valley Revolution airless tire. Flats usually happen at inconvenient times and places when the corn...

You can’t tell the story of American agriculture without looking at how farmers and ranchers have pioneered the use of cutting-edge tools on their land. Innovation and farming go hand in hand. And we’ve come a long way from the first gas-powered tractors a century ago to the state-of-the-art, self-steering models available today. Farmers and ranchers are quick to embrace the best tools to get their work done – and to get it done well. Thanks to advanced farm equipment, better seeds and smarter digital tools, we are growing more while reducing our environmental impact. Major Challenges By 2050, we’ll have nine billion mouths to feed. That’s no small task, and we can’t get the job done without important advances in technology. Farmers today can analyze weather data, manage nutrient application, map their crop yields and adjust planting for the next season with modern precision agriculture tools. Soon, we will be sending out drones to monitor fields with more speed and accuracy than generations before could have dreamed of. We’ll be able to zero in on fields and crops down to the individual plant. We will spot diseases and pests almost the moment they appear, and target our water, pesticide and fertilizer applications to use the right amount at just the right time.

We have seen quite a few OSHA inspections occurring in the cotton ginning industry lately. If you have never been through one, there are a few things you can do now to make it go much more smoothly. First, we...

CLEMSON — An unexpectedly severe drought joined forces this summer with a relentless heat wave in a one-two punch that is knocking many South Carolina farmers off their feet. The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared 35 counties in the state...

ANKENY, Iowa - Monsanto Company and Albaugh, LLC announced today that they have entered into a royalty-bearing license agreement that allows Albaugh to make and sell specific glyphosate formulations in the United States, Canada and Europe. "For years, Albaugh has...

HURON, SD. (Aug. 31, 2015) — Today, AgSense® and Valley® Irrigation announce the release of the CommanderVP™, a new remote monitoring and control solution for Valley control panels. This is the first AgSense telemetry product to completely integrate into...

Cotton Incorporated Launches Cotton Cultivated (cottoncultivated.cottoninc.com) Memphis, TN - Cotton Incorporated has launched a new Web site to give the cotton growing community quick and easy access to important cotton information. Cotton Cultivated (cottoncultivated.cottoninc.com) provides a portal that integrates Web...

Paul Scott Poag Poag Scouting Jonesboro, Ark. (Northeast Arkansas/Southeast Missouri) I started scouting cotton in high school as a summer job, then had an opportunity to work on a few acres independently while I was attending college. When I completed graduate...

Cotton Council International (CCI), the National Cotton Council’s (NCC) export promotions arm, conducts a wide array of activities to help raise U.S. cotton’s global profile with the ultimate goal of enabling the fiber to command a premium in the...