Cotton
Cotton isn’t king in Kansas, but it’s a fine prince for many Jayhawk growers, boosted by the arrival of new 2,4-D technology.
A robotic pigweed killer may provide a 90% reduction in chemical use, maintenance of tractor speed at 6 mph, and the polar opposite of broadcast spraying.
How low and wide can a farmer go? 30,000 seeds per acre, or a lean 20,000, or even a bare-bones 5,000 on 60” rows, and still maintain profit levels?
Steven Ebeling admits farming in West Texas is never easy, but 2022 has been a brutal blow with the majority of the dryland acres already counted as a total loss, and irrigated acres are now struggling to survive.
Nearly 57% of Texas is in extreme drought, and with the most severe level of it parked over West Texas and the Texas Panhandle, the drought is starting to rob even irrigated fields of a crop.
Welcome to a rags to rows farm tale. Cody Parker is insistent: His success is directly linked to the kindness of other farmers.
The class of 2023 is already in cotton fields. The trial runs preface outstanding genetic promise, according to Deltapine’s New Product Evaluator (NPE).
Cotton planting sits at 7% nationwide, on track with the average, and as drought blankets the home of what’s known as the largest cotton patch in the country, dwindling crop outlooks are feeding cotton prices.
USDA released the first crop progress report of the season, and it showed cotton planting is running slightly behind with 4% of the U.S cotton crop currently planted. One meteorologist says drought may be a factor.
The shotgun houses and clapboard shacks are gone, but a child’s toy lingers in farmland rows. Time, tillage and rainfall reveal the sharecropper’s last testament: clusters of magnificent clay, agate and glass marbles.