After cotton growers in West Texas experienced a dry summer in 2009, making it impossible to grow cotton on about 750,000 acres of land, cotton projections numbers are still up from last year’s projections by more than 800,000 bales.
Of the 750,000 acres lost, two-thirds were lost to drought and the other one-third was lost because of a combination of disease in the crop and hail, said Shawn Wade, director of communications for Plains Cotton Growers.
“We had a lot of drought during planting season,” he said. “Hail was also a big contributor to the loss of land and crops.”
Statistics from the beginning of November show that the West Texas area is expected to produce 3.69 million of the 4.9 million bales projected for Texas, Wade said.
Drought during cotton planting season, January to August, has been a big factor in the success or failure of Lubbock planters over the last few years.
“The worst drought was in early 2006,” said Matt Ziebell, a National Weather Services forecaster. “There has not been a severe drought for the last several years though, only moderate to abnormally dry levels.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Web site, the number of bales decreased more than 1.6 million from 2005 to 2006.
Wade said projection numbers, while not completely accurate, offer an estimate on how much cotton farmers can look forward to harvesting. The numbers are gathered through statistics, random samples and surveys and are updated every month from February to August and then a final report is given at the end of the year.
The amount of cotton harvested varies each year because of circumstances such as wind, crops dying, dry weather and a number of other issues, he said, making the exact number hard to predict.
“The great thing about cotton farming is there are never two identical seasons,” Wade said. “It makes seasons interesting.”
During the last 10 years, the largest amount of bales harvested in West Texas was 5.68 million in 2005 while the lowest was 2.32 million bales in 2000.
Texas is estimated to contribute the most to U.S. cotton production with about 4.9 million of the 12.13 million bales grown and harvested in the state, Wade said. The second most is predicted to come from Georgia, with about 1.8 million bales.
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