Weather affects cotton, peanut crops

High winds two weekends ago and the torrential rain on Tuesday have made life difficult for area cotton farmers, who will likely lose some of their crop because of the storm systems.
Peanut farmers are in a bit better shape, but some may be fighting time to get their crops in.
This prediction comes from Clyde Smith, regional pest management agent with the Jackson County Extension Service.
Smith held out some hope, though, that a few warm, dry days could help minimize the damage and give farmers a chance to recover before the cold sets in.
“People had made some good progress on peanut harvest before all this started, but it really slowed down last weekend and the weekend before. With the high humidity we’ve had, it takes longer to dry what’s on top of the ground, what’s been dug and waiting to be harvested out of the field,” he said.
“At the same time, the ground may be too difficult in places to dig those that aren’t already out on top.”
The prognosis is less optimistic for cotton.
“On the cotton end, we had a little that was picked early, but a lot of it’s going to be later and we probably will lose or have lost a little of the cotton that’s loosely hanging on,” he said.
Cotton farmers are hoping a few warm days will help their plants mature before the cool weather comes in to slow the process.
“I know they would have liked to have seen more heat at this stage,” Smith said. “The process of defoliation, when the leaves fall off, is better when its warm. That has to happen ahead of picking.”
Some farmers sprayed their plants to accelerate that process — just ahead of the rain, which washed their efforts away.
With some others getting ready to pick, Tuesday’s downpour will delay the process, since the cotton needs to be fluffy enough for the picking machine to grasp the boll, and the ground dry enough for the machines to move into the fields.
There’s good and bad in the cool weather. It speeds the drying process for cotton, but it also slows the maturation process.
If the weather delays harvest, cotton farmers run the risk of some reduction of quality, and of the cotton falling out of the boll.
Overall, before the moisture moved in, Smith said cotton yields were not looking especially stellar this year, but the outlook wasn’t bad, either. The next few days will be an important time going forward.
“Right now, it’s holding its own, considering,” Smith said Tuesday. “Today was not catastrophic, but we could lose a little more cotton. We need several days of good temperatures. Everybody is going to try to start defoliating, and that process will take a couple of weeks or more.”
As for peanuts, Smith said yields are looking good this year, and that most farmers will be able to finish harvesting it by the end of this week.
“We had some disease problems here near the end because of the clouds and rain, but they’re still in pretty good shape,” Smith said. “This kind of weather is conducive to the development of diseases like leaf spot, because moisture tends to stay in the plant canopy and feed it. It may force early picking for some, but they should come out all right.”