Looking hopefully at the gray clouds in the sky over his cotton field, Dwight Colson said Wednesday that if it didn’t rain over the field in the next two days or so, he would have to turn on his irrigation system to water the cotton he planted in the spring.
Colson is a farmer in Caledonia with about 500 acres of various crops, including cotton, wheat, soy beans, oats and pumpkins. In his 40-plus years of planting, this is one of the dryer summers he remembers.
“I’ve never seen it stay hot like this,” he said.
It rained over his cotton about 10 days ago, he said. Now he needs it to rain again–and to rain in the right place, over his fields and not over his house.
“They’re spotty thunderstorms,” he said.
Severe heat combined with lack of rain can stress annual crops. And though the summer’s not over, it’s shaping up to be one of the hotter summers on record, said State Meteorologist Mike Brown.
“We’re running on a daily basis anywhere between four and six degrees above normal,” Brown said. “But really we’re not alone. This trend is throughout most of the central United States.”
That kind of excessive heat just worsens drought conditions, he said.
“Most of the state now is in some form of a drought,” he said. “It’s very minor or in some cases moderate, and there’s even small pockets of severe drought within Mississippi. … The hotter we are, the more evaporation is going to take place and the more stress we’re going to put on various plants including agricultural vegetation.”
Making adjustments
Colson is monitoring his cotton for just such stress. He has a monitor and sensors at different depths in his field — six, 12, 18 and 24 inches. The monitor lets him know how much moisture the plants are getting from the soil, giving readings from 0-100 centibars. The ideal is 30-40 centibars. Currently its showing 65 centibars.
Luckily he can turn on his $80,000 irrigation system, which pumps 400 gallons of water per minute and can water all his cotton. But cotton is the only crop the irrigation system can reach. His oats and wheat were already harvested, and his pumpkins are still growing, but if the hot, dry weather continues, his soybeans will quit blooming, he said.
But it’s only if the excessive, higher-than-average temperatures and the drought continue into August that it could have economic repercussions for farmers, Brown said. But he doesn’t expect the higher-than-average temperatures to continue into August.
“Typically it’s going to stress those crops and not just crops but livestock as well,” he said. “The heat will lead to livestock potentially becoming more lethargic, not eating as much and therefore not putting on as much muscle mass, which could lead to lower sale prices down the road for some of those farmers.
“Right now, we’re not in any sort of an agricultural crisis in Mississippi,” he added. “The heat is leading to more and more drought each and every day that we don’t get widespread rain, but we haven’t reached any critical conditions yet across the state. So most of the vegetation from what I’ve seen and the people that I’ve talked to is still doing fairly well despite the warmer temperatures.”
Farming is ‘legalized gambling’
Cotton is a hot weather crop anyway, said Charlie Stokes, an agronomist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service.
“It can tolerate heat a little more than a grain crop, like corn or soybeans,” Stokes said. “It can certainly get too hot for cotton, but cotton can thrive in temps in the 90 degrees like we’ve been having.”
In parts of the Golden Triangle that have gotten rain this summer, the cotton is doing well, Stokes said. But cotton in Noxubee County, which hasn’t seen much rain this summer, is suffering.
Colson isn’t much more concerned about his crops than usual, he said. This is his 45th crop, and 40 of them have had some issue. This year there isn’t enough rain. In years past, there has been too much.
“We call farming legalized gambling,” he said. “We roll the dice every year and sometimes we hit and sometimes we miss.”
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