Drought Provides Proving Ground for Texas Varieties
May 16, 2013 Although it doesn’t grab as many headlines as it did two years ago, for many cotton producers in the Southwest, the lingering drought is still a daily challenge.
In early April, as many growers were making their final planting decisions, moisture levels on the High Plains and Rolling Plains remained unchanged. The 2012 growing season saw one good rain – a late season downpour that helped spur the cotton that had hung on for that long. A snow event in the Lubbock area during the winter season benefitted some, but was spotty.
Prior to planting the 2013 crop, many growers remained as bone dry as they had ever been. On television, a Lubbock meteorologist ran an “April showers” themed promotion that gave away umbrellas to daily winners – a gesture that must’ve seemed ironic for most growers in the region.
For Steve Moore, who farms nearly 4,000 acres of cotton on the Lower Rolling Plains in Scurry, Fisher and Nolan Counties, there hasn’t been need for an umbrella in quite some time. His acreage – over an hour and a half to the south and east of Lubbock, is dotted with dozens of wind mill turbines. While the large structures provide added income, they also serve as a reminder of the challenges of growing cotton in such a dry, windy environment.
“I’ve got about 750 acres under some form of irrigation or another,” says Moore. “I’m mostly dryland. We just don’t have any water around here to make drilling a well worthwhile. We found out in 2011 we just have supplemental water – we don’t have what you would really call irrigation water.”
Like most growers in the area, 2011 was nearly a total loss from a production standpoint for Moore. His dryland acreage – the vast majority of his cotton – never emerged. Crop insurance, he says, was a blessing in such a disastrous year.
But because he has what he calls supplemental water on some of his acreage, Moore has been able to glean some knowledge from the challenging 2011 and 2012 growing seasons. He realizes that in these dry conditions, variety selection is big factor.
“I’d say it’s the most important decision I can make in a planting season,” Moore says.
New Challenges
Moore grew up on a farm in Paris, TX – a town in eastern Texas that enjoys considerably more rainfall than his current home. When he moved to West Texas 30 years ago, the rainfall, or lack thereof, was one of the first things he noticed.
“That first year we moved out here we didn’t think it was ever going to rain,” he says, laughing. “When it finally did, we just went out to stand in it. It was a big change from where we came from.”
Now, he says, the best thing he can do is stay informed on which varieties perform best under the stress of limited water scenarios.
“You have to find those varieties that fit your farm, because they all manage a little differently,” Moore says.
For Moore, that philosophy paid off in 2012 when he planted FiberMax FM 1944 GLB2 on some of his irrigated acreage. The new variety performed extremely well, yielding so highly that it landed Moore in the FiberMax One Ton Club – a distinction reserved for FiberMax growers who yield 2,000 pounds or more per acre with a FiberMax variety.
“I planted it pretty heavily on my drip acreage, for it to be the first year for that variety,” says Moore. “I thought that it was going to work, and it turns out it did. You have to go to the test plots and check them out to make an informed decision. I try to make all the field days I can where the varieties are showcased.
“Anytime there’s a grower meeting I go and try and learn something. You’ve got to get off of the farm and go find out these things.”
While his advice is echoed by industry experts, Moore has the benefit of being able to conduct variety research without ever leaving his own farm. Bayer CropScience runs a dryland variety trial on Moore’s operation, giving him an up-close view of how a handful of FiberMax and Stoneville varieties will perform in harsh, dryland conditions. Last year, FM 9170 B2F was the highest yielder in the dryland trials on his own farm. Moore is familiar with the FiberMax workhorse, having qualified wfor the One Ton Club with FM 9170 B2F in 2010.
Given the success of the variety on his farm last year, it should come as no surprise that Moore is planting more of the same – FM 9170 B2F – in the 2013 season. Still, he says, he is paying more attention to the stacked trait LibertyLink varieties that FiberMax offers.
“I’m shifting to more of the LibertyLink varieties because we’re probably going to have resistance to glyphosate in this area before too long,” Moore says. “We haven’t seen any yet, but they suspect some in the northern part of the county. So I’m looking at the Liberty varieties just in case we do get in trouble.”
Moore has taken the warnings from other parts of the Cotton Belt when it comes to getting out in front of glyphosate resistance.
“I’m planning ahead. I know that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
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