My lab (right) after a recent rain
May of 2015 is coming to a close and the cotton crop is still in the seed bags. Spring 2015 has been a season of rain, lots of rain. This is the 5th wettest May on record in the Lubbock area, the wettest since 1949, and we still have 10 days to go in the month and it is raining again tonight. The probability of rain over the next five days is high.
My corn research plots were planted in April just before the rain started, and the plants are growing well enough in spite of the much cooler than normal temperatures. However, cotton, the staple crop of the southern High Plains, is at risk. Cotton requires soil temperatures of at least 60 degrees at planting and our soil temperatures are not there yet, in part because of the cold rain and in part because of below average temperatures. (The high tomorrow will be 60.) While some people might think this is not a big deal, it really is. Cotton requires warm temperatures to grow and yield, and cotton planted in the Lubbock area after the 5th of June cannot be insured under the crop insurance program because the odds makers have decided there may not be enough heat units before fall to finish out the crop. When planted in cold soil, seedling cotton can be decimated by diseases. If the temperatures remain cool (and sometimes even if they don't) it can also be decimated by insects (thrips). So cotton growers are faced with a rapidly closing planting window this year. More rains will mean an additional 4-7 days needed to dry the fields, and this pushes cotton growers inexorably toward the June 5th insurance cutoff date.
Cotton is the lifeblood of the local agricultural economy and some growers are starting to consider corn or sorghum if they can't get cotton planted on time. This is not like deciding to drive the Chevy Suburban because the pickup truck is in the shop, it is a very serious decision with plenty of downside risk. Corn has the disadvantage of requiring far more water to make a crop than does cotton or sorghum, and if it turns dry later in the season then many farmers won't have the irrigation capacity for corn; they may lose most of the crop and the mycotoxin levels that are exacerbated by drought stress might make the remainder of the crop unmarketable. (Corn cannot be grown on dryland (unirrigated) acres here.) Sorghum is a good crop with respect to limited water, but the new pest, sugarcane aphid, might decimate it unless a lot of money is spent on insecticides. And all indications are that sugarcane aphid will arrive here early this year. To complete the picture, the prices for all of these commodities are down this year and there is not much chance of returning a profit from growing any of them.
Farmers on the southern High Plains are being squeezed by nature. Memories of the exceptional drought of 2011 - 2013 are still vivid and no one wants to revisit that nightmare. The interesting thing is that I have not heard one of them verbalize the thought that they wish it would stop raining. Yes they want an un-verbalized three week hiatus from the rain so that they can plant cotton, but no one is saying that they would like the rain to stop. In West Texas we know what rain means, and no one is going to use the word stop in the same sentence as the word rain. A vacation from the rain for a couple of weeks would be nice, but we never want it to stop.
