West Texas Cotton Grower Shows Unconventional Wisdom
March 1, 2012 
Anyone with Ophidiophobia – the unnatural fear of snakes – might want to scroll down a bit.
“We were harvesting cotton last year in October and November. A rattlesnake was the furthest thing from our minds at that time of year,” says Andy Wisdom. “But they would crawl over to the shady side of a module. They’d sit there and cool off. They did it on just about all the modules we had.
“Some of the hands came running out of there one time yelling ‘Snake! Snake!’ I thought there was just no way. We killed three or four snakes one week. From October to about March, we just hadn’t worried about them. That time of year it’s supposed to be cold enough to drive them into hibernation.”
Well, it wasn’t. And that’s an indication of how hot and dry it got on the High Plains of Texas last summer.
In many cases, rattlesnakes found a cool spot and stayed put until something or somebody ran them off.
Andy Wisdom, who farms with his brother Alan and Alan’s son Chay near Levelland, TX, says, “We got no measurable rain after July.”
Still, between the three of them, they will farm 6,100 acres this year, up from 5,300 in 2011.
“We do some things together and then we do some things separately. Sometimes when you get this big, you get more done if you split things up,” says Andy.
Chay raises dryland cotton, while the brothers are 25% dryland and 75% irrigated. This year they will operate 85 wells.
“It’s a lot harder out here,” says Andy. “We may have to run eight wells to get 300 gallons per minute to a pivot. We used some of our drip to get the cotton up. Really, I don’t know how we got it up it was so dry. I ran mine about eight or nine weeks straight. At one time I had 65 wells running.”
Because of the water shortage that plagues just about all of West Texas, center pivots could barely keep up last summer. In some cases, they didn’t keep up. The Wisdoms could effectively irrigate half circles. The other half was abandoned. Later on, they even cut back to only one-quarter of a circle.
“We were waiting on a rain the whole time and we just never got it,” Andy says. “It’s the worst thing I’ve seen in my lifetime,” says Andy.
Weather Pattern to Hold?
It appears that the La Niña weather phenomenon that is being blamed for the extreme drought in West Texas is sticking around longer than one normally does. A La Niña usually lasts 18 months, according in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but this one may last for two years. If the La Niña doesn’t break soon the Wisdoms won’t turn on a well.
“We won’t crank up a well unless it rains or we have winter moisture,” Andy says. “If we go through another winter like 2011 and we don’t have any moisture and we’re sitting here again in April with no rain, we’re not cranking a well up. You just can’t fight it. You cannot fight it. We got to the point last year where we’d run a well three days and lose all the water. Then we had to let it sit for about a week, turn it on again for three days, then off again. I’m not sure that well will ever come back to where it was.”
Even home wells were not exempt.
“I thought maybe we had some problems with a house well, but I turned on a faucet and it was about half air and half water,” Alan explains. “That’s not good, because it’s not the well. We had to turn a pivot off. I guess it comes down to if you want to take a bath or water cotton.”
Winter and spring rains will be even more of a determining factor on how growers will farm cotton this year.
“We can’t wait until planting time to make a decision on turning on our wells,” says Andy. “We just can’t wait that long. If we’re going to go for it, we have to be running by mid-March and try to plant in May. If we sit here and haven’t had rain all winter, we’ll just plant dryland and not crank up the wells, then let things fall where they fall. We’ll plant, but we won’t try to water it like we did last year.”
The Traditional Approach
The Wisdoms have not seen any glyphosate-resistant careless weed, which is just another name for Palmer amaranth. And they don’t expect to if they continue with their traditional approach to weed control.
“We do things a little bit differently than some of these guys out here do. When Flex came out the Monsanto guy told me to add Roundup to what we’d been doing and I’d love it,” Alan says. “But he said that if I quit what I was doing and counted on just Roundup, I’d be in trouble. We’re still putting out yellows and banding some chemicals behind our planters. We’re going at it from three different angles.”
Andy adds, “Putting out yellows is probably the cheapest thing you can do. We never quit them. By using the yellows and going back with a herbicide behind the planters, we’re still clean when people who just rely on Roundup are spraying. So we’re saving that early spray. That’s the way I feel.”
The Wisdoms use both Treflan and Prowl, then band either Cotoran or Direx behind the planter. After that, they’ll spray Roundup.
Tumbling Tumble Weed
Tumbleweeds are iconic in West Texas, and they show up over and over in Western movies. Well, they didn’t go away, even though the popularity of the Westerns has faded somewhat.
“What scares me personally, more than anything, is tumbleweed. Roundup will get them if they’re small enough,” Andy says. “But if they start getting bigger, then maybe they’re generating resistance.”
The Wisdoms plant FiberMax FM 1880B2F on dryland, and they planted FiberMax 9063B2F for several years before newer, better varieties started showing up.
“We had good luck with 9063B2F, but I think we’ve passed that now,” Andy says. “We just think the new ones are better – FiberMax FM 9180B2F and FM 9170B2F. The 9170B2F looks like it’s going to be good. And we used Stoneville ST 5458B2F and ST 4288B2F. You do have to be aggressive with technology in this game, then it’s lead, follow, or get out of the way.”
Their insect situation also improved after Bollgard was introduced and the boll weevil was eradicated. In fact, the Wisdoms say they really don’t have an issue with insects. But a few years back, the biggest fear was aphids.
“There was no way to get a handle on them. It seemed they always hit on a hard year. The more you fought them, the worse it got. They just wouldn’t go away,” says Andy.
With the loss of Temik, thrips could become somewhat of a problem. Temik was also an effective tool in battling nematodes.
“I don’t know what we’ll use this year, but we had cut back so much on expenses,” Alan says. “We still need some help. That’s why we started raising some of the Stoneville varieties the last couple of years. They seem to be a little more nematode tolerant. There were two of them – ST 5448B2F and ST 4288B2F. We’re definitely using some of the Stoneville varieties because of their nematode tolerance.”
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