COTTON USA sponsored the 26th annual Golden Melody Awards (GMA) in Taiwan, the Chinese equivalent of the Grammy Awards. A popular music event in Mandarin pop music, curated by the Taiwan Television Company and the Recording Industry Foundation in...

ARIZONA At the time of this writing (mid-June), the majority of the crop is entering first bloom. The first half of June has seen some high temperatures across the state with the low desert experiencing temperatures near the 115-degree mark....

Tractor To Army Soldier Rush Limbaugh and Mahindra USA announced the winner of the Mahindra Tractors Military Salute Giveaway on The Rush Limbaugh Show. Shep Snow, an Army veteran from Sagle, Idaho, will receive a new Mahindra eMax 22HST tractor...

Texas is known for volatile weather, which can have a significant impact on agriculture in the state. Cotton crops fluctuate with what Mother Nature throws at us, and for good reason as many of our acres are dryland production....

Even though some cotton varieties have natural drought tolerance built in, weather patterns of erratic rainfall and predictions of increased competition for water resources in the future are of concern to the entire cotton-growing community. Last year, Cotton Incorporated...

The first iPiPE design originated 10 years ago with the soybean rust website, which became known as Integrated Pest Management PiPE or ipmPiPE. The ipmPiPE was a collaboration of Extension professionals in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The ipmPiPE offered IT tools, pest observations and models to meet the information requirements for the economical management of invasive and endemic crop pests. With its awardwinning success at monitoring soybean rust and providing guidelines for its control, the ipmPiPE design was extended to other geographies, crops and pests, such as the Legume, North Central, Onion, Pecan and Cucurbit ipmPiPEs. The PiPE design took another evolutionary step with the integrated PiPE or iPiPE. The iPiPE has advanced IT features, including the modernization of data collection (i.e. electronic records versus paper notes) and storage (central database for data sharing); scouting apps for mobile devices; pest alerts to provide lead time for implementing control practice and multi-form derivative products from weather, crop and pest models to support

The National Cotton Council (NCC) continues to monitor 2014 farm law implementation and provide USDA with input for ensuring that the legislation’s final rules do not undermine U.S. cotton’s competitiveness. How are payment limits being implemented? ■ The farm bill institutes...

High Plains Producer Says It’s Full Speed Ahead For Cotton BY SHAWN HOLLADAY LAMESA, TEXAS EDITOR’S NOTE – Texas High Plains producer Shawn Holladay has somehow survived a four-year drought and record rainfall this spring. However, he remains confident that this year’s...

Are there things about history that can help us today? Or is it better to stay in the present and concentrate only on the future? I ask myself those questions a lot these days as the U.S. cotton industry tries to chart a path toward better prices, increased acreage and more demand in global markets. Not surprisingly, I was thumbing through some old issues of Cotton Farming recently and came across the January 2003 issue, and it made me think about the environment we were in 12 years ago. On the cover is a photo of Memphis merchant Billy Dunavant, manufacturer Duke Kimbrell of Parkdale Mills and Mississippi producer Kenneth Hood. They were standing in front of the National Cotton Council offices in Memphis, and the theme of that issue was “Industry Unity.” I can vividly recall the day that we took that photo and the ensuing roundtable interview that occurred inside the NCC’s offices. We were lucky to bring together three industry giants that day. The weather cooperated and allowed us to take the photo outside the iconic NCC building in midtown Memphis.

Do you ever wonder if the rest of the country really appreciates the plight of cotton farmers? Maybe that’s a ridiculous question. But it’s still intriguing to hear how the national media recently reported on a tropical storm in...

If you ever worried about the next generation of cotton industry leaders, you can relax. Maybe that’s an overly confident remark to make in 2015. However, based on what I recently observed at a media panel discussion with members of the new Emerging Leaders Class program, the future has never looked better. This program, now in its third year, is supported by a grant to The Cotton Foundation from Monsanto. The National Cotton Council (NCC) conducts the program’s activities, and the goal is to provide participants a better understanding of how the NCC carries out its mission. Members of this class will participate in three sessions during the next year. The first session involved media training in Memphis and a trip to Monsanto’s corporate headquarters in St. Louis. The second session will consist of a trip to the NCC’s Annual Meeting in February where class members will observe how the organization develops policy. The third session will involve a trip to Washington where the focus will be on policy implementation and international market development.

John Norman John Norman Ag Consultation Weslaco, Texas My first work in pest management in cotton, other than the farm I was raised on in Cameron County, was with the USDA at Brownsville, helping to read results from insecticide trials. All...

One reason I like production agriculture is because no two years are ever alike. You have to muster all your agronomic skills to deal with the crazy situations that Mother Nature hands to you. This year’s craziness has been continuous rainfall at planting time when we were supposed to be experiencing a drought. We received so much rain that fields were planted piecemeal as opportunities arose. In many cases, planting opportunities boiled down to having only a few hours in which to plant rather than several consecutive days. This is the first time in my 35 years as an agricultural consultant in the Plainview, Texas, area that rainfall has delayed cotton planting to the extent that many producers made the decision to switch from cotton to sorghum or corn because the probability of maturing an irrigated cotton crop that was planted in June was significantly diminished.So, what’s next? On the positive side, most areas are starting with a full soil profile of moisture. This will be beneficial to all crops we grow. But, if drought conditions do arrive later in the season, a full soil profile at planting will be of little consequence without timely in-season rains or irrigations.

Featured New Product Evaluator: James Kamas, from Temple, Texas https://youtu.be/CkktnyFB2kc Monsanto’s Learning Center in Scott, Mississippi, researches and develops new cotton varieties that are tailored to different soils throughout the Cotton Belt. Deltapine NPE James Kamas, of Temple, Texas, says that...