Weather conditions impact cotton crops

CALHOUN COUNTY,Miss. (WCBI) – It’s a race against the clock for cotton farmers, after weather conditions throw off the harvest season.

“We just need a chance to get this crop out of the field, while we still can. We’re worried about the rain system coming in now,” said Mississippi State Extension Service Regional specialist Dr. Billy Burdine.

Rainy weather is usually a blessing for farmers, but this season it may be a curse.

Some crops, like corn and rice were plucked early, while others like cotton and soybeans had to wait out the weather mood swings.

Calhoun County farmer Seth Davis says this season has been a roller coaster.

“We had such a long spell of dry. Six weeks, from June to August of no rain. Had a good cotton crop and it shed a lot of squares off. Then it turn back to a wet spell and made it go back to growing. I had fertilizer still on the ground. It made it a little harder to foliate and some places had foliated again to knock the re-growth off,”said Davis.

In late September, seven inches of rain fell throughout the area. Burdine says it’s important for farmers to get to work, while the weather holds off.

“The earlier the better. The longer that cotton is in the field, the more loss we’ll have either from deterioration or just overall yield loss on its own. Cotton is graded in a lot of different ways,”said Burdine.

Cotton farmers are in mid-harvest now. The weather delayed harvesting up to 10 days.