By Reagan Calk
Radio Okla. Ag Network
According to the latest Oklahoma Crop Progress Report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Oct. 2, cotton conditions rated 9% good to excellent, 28% fair, and 63% poor to very poor. In the previous week, conditions were rated 14% good to excellent, 25% fair, and 61% poor to very poor.
“It has been a very rough year,” NexGen Regional Manager Shane Osborne said. “We actually started out with decent potential, but the heat this year has been overwhelming. We had an abundance of heat from early on.”
Many areas never received enough rainfall to develop or store water in the soil profile, Osborne said.
“That storage in the profile – we rely heavily on that to make cotton in Oklahoma both for dryland, of course, but also the irrigated acre depends heavily on that storage,” Osborne said. “Our best crops come from a combination of irrigation and storage. When we don’t have that, it is going to be a very tough year.”
Cotton harvest is approaching and some producers are applying harvest aids.
“If we continue to have open weather, it will be pretty quick,” Osborne said. “Unfortunately, a lot of that harvest is happening without a stripper or a picker. It is going on with a shredder because those acres are failing. It is going to be pretty tough this year on a harvested acre number for Oklahoma.”