Despite only growing the crops in the southeastern corner of the state, last year Missouri ranked fourth nationally in rice production and fifth in cotton production, according to the USDA. This year, farmers have navigated some weather challenges for the crops and are hopeful for decent yields as harvest time approaches.
Clay Hawes, who farms in New Madrid County, says cotton bolls have been appearing in fields, although a wet spring led to planting delays for the crop.
“The cotton crop looks to be healthy but just average,” he says. “Most of the cotton was planted very late this year due to spring rains.”
After the cool, wet spring, summer was hot, which did help the crop.
“We have had a very hot and humid summer, and cotton thrives in those conditions,” Hawes says.
University of Missouri Extension cotton specialist Bradley Wilson says pests were an early concern for the cotton crop. He is based at MU’s Fisher Delta Research Center at Portageville.
“Starting the year in mid-April throughout the month of May, the Bootheel was dealing with circumstances of rainy periods along with cool and cloudy conditions reducing cotton’s ability to rapidly grow, furthering our susceptibility to early season pests,” he says.
Thrips were the main insect concern, he says.
Strong winds in late April may have caused sandblasting to the young cotton and led to some replanting, Wilson says.
“As we moved into June, conditions drastically changed with long periods of drought conditions coupled with 95- to 105-degree days,” he says. This was important for cotton as the replanted cotton and slow-growing cotton quickly turned around and began to rapidly grow.”
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July brought extreme heat and drought. Irrigation is widespread in southeast Missouri, but Wilson says producers had to step up their irrigation amounts.
“This resulted in producers watering cotton generally every five to seven days for several weeks,” he says. “Therefore watering was greater this year than we have observed in the past for the Bootheel.”
August brought a few rains. Wilson says the long-term forecast for the fall looks to be fairly dry and sunny, which he says is “greatly needed” for late-planted cotton to reach boll maturity on the top fruiting nodes.
Overall, he expects a decent year for irrigated cotton, while non-irrigated cotton should show the effects of the summer drought.
“This year was generally above average for our irrigated producers, although the dryland crop which is under a small number of acres will likely be lower than what we expect on a yearly basis due to the growing conditions this year,” Wilson says.
MU Extension rice specialist Justin Chlapecka says it has been a fairly good summer for growing rice. The hot summer helped the crop catch up after a slow start.
“This year we were a little late planting, but we made up for it with pretty good growing conditions,” Chlapecka says.
He also expects good quality for the crop. Chlapecka, who is also based at MU’s Fisher Delta Research Center, says nighttime temperatures above 70 to 76 degrees could cause issues with pollination, but almost all the rice saw nighttime temperatures at or below that, except for some of the earliest-planted rice.
“I think we’ll have good quality during grain fill,” he says.
Speaking on Aug. 31, Chlapecka says there could be rice harvest starting in his area as early as Labor Day. He is expecting good yields, albeit not as high as the state record rice yields seen last year.
“I think it’s slightly above average,” he says.