Timely rains are helping cotton yields in Texas this year. The Texas Farm Bureau and USDA agree this could be the largest cotton crop in more than a decade. Texas cotton grower Charles Ring says his crop looks great.
“We haven’t had rain since [the bolls] opened, so we’re in good shape,” he told AgDay’s Clinton Griffiths. “We’ve seen some two and a half to three-quarters bale dryland cotton this year and we haven’t even gotten to the irrigated [fields yet].”
Ring’s neighbor, Bobby Rieder, says his fields look great too.
“I think this is going to be one of our better years. Of course every year I tell everybody that we’re going have the best year ever,” he says. “For the past 10 or 12 years we’ve been doing the county test plot for cotton and the yields this year on that were 2.25 to 2.5 bale cotton.”
Cotton yields must be high for farmers to make a profit.
“Unfortunately, cotton is an expensive crop to raise and you need to make bale to bale and a half just to break even on your expenses,” Rieder says.
According to San Patricio county Texas farmer, Bobby Nedbalek, cotton seed costs more than $80 an acre.
“We can’t have an average crop and make that work,” he says. “You have to out yield the market and that’s not a healthy thing to see because we should be getting ahead this year and as it is we’re just going to be getting along.”
