Wrapping Up The 2024 Cotton Crop

TEXAS | Ben McKnight

As the 2024 growing season winds down and we begin to shift towards making plans for the 2025 cotton crop, there are some decisions made now that can help get next year’s cotton crop off to a strong start. One of the items at the top of many growers’ list is how to manage weeds in 2025 with the uncertainty surrounding the registration of approved dicamba products. While dicamba herbicide has provided an extremely useful tool for managing troublesome species, including Palmer amaranth and tall waterhemp, other options for effective weed management are still available.

From a weed control standpoint, I am a big proponent of starting the growing season off clean and staying clean for the remainder of the year. One way to accomplish this is to begin as soon as the 2024 crop is harvested. In many growing regions in Texas, there is still plenty of warm weather left between harvesting and the first freeze. Palmer amaranth and tall waterhemp can capitalize on these favorable growing conditions in the fall, and in some cases, can produce viable seed that can end up creating weed control headaches in the following growing season.

Fall and winter weed control options, including mechanical weed control and residual herbicide programs, can assist with managing these weed pests and preventing them from contributing more seed to the soil seedbank. Always familiarize yourself with the product labels and make sure to pay close attention to product rates and re-crop intervals for residual herbicides to avoid cotton crop injury in the following year.

Residual herbicides applied pre-plant or pre-emergence can also provide value to weed management by extending weed control during the most crucial time to avoid weed competition with cotton, early in the season. Additionally, overlaying residual products with early post-emergence applications can extend residual weed control further into the growing season. bmcknight@tamu.edu

MISSISSIPPI | Brian Pieralisi

October is a tricky month for a variety of reasons in Mississippi.  First of all, there is Halloween (the trickiest day of the year), coupled with a strange transition from summer to “fall” and harvest season.

As for cotton, the bulk of harvest is during October for us. It’s tricky in terms of both defoliation and harvest. I always run into a conundrum with crop maturity, environmental conditions and low temperatures, all of which complicate things. Earlier cotton is less tricky as temperatures are consistently higher, and hormonal products work better under these conditions. 

As I write this on Oct. 10, Hurricane Milton ravaged the Florida peninsula last night. I have compassion for the folks dealing with this type of devastation because it reminds me of all the years, especially when I was farming, where hurricanes took most everything you worked so hard for that year.

In Mississippi, the U.S. Department of Agriculture currently has us at 45% complete with harvest. Based on the two-week forecast, this number should bump up to 80% to 85% complete by late October. Similar to last year, cotton yields are variable, but the low end isn’t nearly as low.

Basically, cotton that received one to two timely rains or was irrigated at the right time, is producing phenomenal yields. Later-planted cotton, especially in the eastern and northern part of the state, is producing average to slightly below-average yields. This was primarily due to a very wet May, which kept farmers out of the fields until early June, posing problems for the entire year.

Based on cotton market prices, it will likely be a tough year for some, but hopefully we will see some improvement in the market. Visit Mississippi-crops.com for Mississippi cotton variety data that will be available by Dec. 1. bkp4@msstate.edu

NORTH CAROLINA | Guy Collins

As I write this on Sept. 24, rains continue across most of North Carolina as it has for a lot of September. Naturally, this has led to a noticeable amount of hardlock in places, depending on the variety and when it was planted.

When bolls pop open, the burrs essentially just need to dry out in order to retract and expose lint for harvest. When the burrs can not dry out due to prolonged wet, cloudy conditions, hardlock can result. With that said, many areas have had intermittent sunshine, which has helped some bolls to open normally.

As of this point in time, the forecast has sunny weather toward the end of the first week of October, and hopefully that will be the case. We always say that September and October will either preserve our yield potential or chip away at it, and this year is a reminder of that. We’ll see what October holds with regard to weather.

By the time this article is read, harvest will hopefully be winding down. Variety performance data from the North Carolina On-Farm Cotton Variety Evaluation Program and North Carolina State University OVT is usually available in early December and will be published on cotton.ces.ncsu.edu and will also appear in the North Carolina Cotton Variety Performance Calculator (trials.ces.ncsu.edu/cotton) as soon as data becomes available. guy_collins@ncsu.edu

TEXAS | Ken Legé

West Texas cotton growers entered the 2024 season after enduring the last two years of drought, heat and high abandonment rates across the region. Although drought persisted through April, the region began receiving timely and effective planting rains in May, and the crop generally was planted into better moisture than we have seen in the last two years. The rain and humidity generally continued into June and July, making weed control both easier and harder; easier because we had better activity from residuals and glufosinate from the higher-than-average humidity; harder because the welcomed, frequent rainfall also brought new flushes of weeds, and growers had to run sandfighters after every shower to keep the sand blowing on conventionally tilled fields.

Earlier-planted fields tended to perform better than late-planted fields, which reversed a trend we have seen in recent years. With the rainfall in May, June and July, coupled with a milder-than-average July, early fruit set was tremendous. Very high retention and good growth resulted from the favorable weather early in the season.

Then came August, which brought very high temperatures and very little rainfall. Not only were the daytime high temperatures extreme, but the nighttime low temperatures were higher than normal, with many of those above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which is very unusual in the High Plains region. The result was massive fruit shed, which hit the later-planted crop worse than the earlier-planted crop. The later-planted crop (planted in late May and mostly in early June south of Lubbock) began blooming about the same time as the extreme heat and drought hit in August. The result has been high abandonment for dryland fields, especially south of Lubbock, which is 80% to 90% dryland.

There are some bright spots in the region’s production: the panhandle area had more rainfall in August and generally has a good crop, even on most dryland cotton. The area north of Lubbock to Tulia has some very good irrigated yield potential and will see lower abandonment on dryland than the last two years. However, the area south of Lubbock has been devastated by the August weather and will suffer great losses of dryland acres, and the light water pivots, which dominate the irrigated crop in that area, will once again produce disappointing yields.

Another positive aspect of the season has been the warmer-than-average September. In some areas, DD60 accumulation has been nearly twice as high as normal. This has allowed full maturation of any late-set fruit, and it will keep our micronaire levels in the non-discount, if not the premium, range. Fiber maturation and associated micronaire readings are a continual concern for West Texas growers. At least for 2024, we don’t have to worry about discounts from low micronaire; this is, however, a small consolation, given the yield levels.

As of this writing (Oct. 10), defoliation has begun in earnest across the region, and with the warm temperatures, chemical choices are not a concern; nearly any combination of harvest aids have done an outstanding job. Late October will most certainly bring some cool season challenges (the average freeze date for Lubbock is Oct. 31).  All current predictions are for a later-than-average frost and freeze, but we know that can change quickly.

While growers are most certainly concerned with having to use crop insurance claims for dryland acres, the local gins and associated support industry are facing even more dire financial challenges. In many cases, gins in the region are facing a third season of not operating, which could be the death knell for many of those operations, unfortunately. The result will most likely be significant consolidation in the ginning industry in West Texas. This is especially true south of Lubbock, but less so as you move northward toward the panhandle area. Everyone in the cotton industry is hoping 2025 brings more favorable conditions. ken.lege@ag.tamu.edu

ALABAMA | Scott H. Graham

This has been a challenging year for the Alabama crop. Alternating months of drought and rain pushed the cotton to make as much as it could in a short amount of time. I have heard Dr. Steve Brown say many times that “you can make a crop in four weeks.” This year, that is exactly what we had to do. Drought in June and August were relatively mitigated by significant rains in July and September. Input decisions were difficult to make as when there was no rain, it felt as if it would never rain again; then when rains started, it was hard to get back in the field.

As I write this in early October, cotton harvest has just gotten started. Early yield reports are all over the board, but generally speaking, most people have been pleasantly surprised. The early planted crop, late April to the first week of May, has been better than we thought. Cotton that was reaching peak bloom in July when rains came were able to make a crop in a short amount of time.

Another factor in this has been lack of boll rot. Thankfully, the earliest-set bolls are making it to the picker this year. Many of the farmers, consultants and scouts I have talked to have been optimistic on the crop. However, at the time I am writing, about 20% of the crop has been harvested, so we still have a ways to go. We will know a lot more about where the state average will land when this report comes out, but hopefully things continue to trend better than expected. scottg@auburn.edu

TENNESSEE | Tyson Raper

In the past few days, I’ve had a number of calls concerning variety performance. For those who have followed my comments through the year or have friends farming over here in Tennessee, you likely understand how challenging our season has been. Our wet May/June/July limited the number of acres we could plant and created a shallow-rooted crop, while August turned very dry and much of our crop suffered, and those that received even the slightest rainfall in August are much better off than those who did not.

The number of varieties an operation plants within a given year now typically falls under five, and the date and location when each of these is planted often varies substantially. I would strongly encourage caution when trying to extrapolate field performance of a variety in a given season without reference to other varieties.

In Tennessee, variety trials are regularly conducted in every cotton-producing county.  This holds true throughout the Mid-South. The best way to understand variety performance relative to its peers is to evaluate these ‘ceteris paribus’ — with all other variables (planting date, soil type, rainfall, pest pressure, etc.) held constant.

Most specialists will publish variety trial results in early December. These evaluations are the best assessment of variety performance and are much better at predicting variety performance in subsequent years than field-by-field observations. traper@utk.edu

ARKANSAS | Zachary Treadway

As I began to write this on Oct. 2, I had to reach deep in the closet for a sweatshirt that morning. It felt like fall had arrived in Arkansas. The following days were much warmer though, with highs approaching 90 degrees. At that time, we had around 25% of cotton harvested in Arkansas, but as I expected, that number grew rapidly as we have encountered a welcome long dry spell.

It is now Oct. 10, and according to the latest report, and adjusting for the days since the release of that report, I would approximate that we are nearing the halfway point of cotton harvest. Compared to last year and the five-year average, we seem to be slightly ahead of schedule.

The past several weeks have been a trying time for cotton farmers across the entire belt. Hurricane Francine blew into Arkansas on Sept. 12 and dumped up to eight inches of rain in areas. This left producers with lodged plants, standing water and fiber dripping out of open bolls. The remnants of Hurricane Helene followed a couple of weeks later, bringing even more rain to an already saturated region. The turn to dry weather has been a welcome change in The Natural State. Early harvest reports have been very encouraging, and we hope to continue with that momentum and have a safe, bountiful and uninterrupted harvest moving forward.

In closing, I would be remiss not to mention our friends in the eastern parts of the belt who are facing the hardships following Hurricane Helene. This community, though geographically distant, is very close knit with a common goal of feeding and clothing the world. The scenes out of those areas are unfathomable, and I cannot imagine what those producers are facing. So please keep these producers, and all of those affected, in your thoughts and prayers. As always, if there is anything I can do, please do not hesitate to reach out. ztreadway@uada.edu