cotton crop

Already the world's leading soybean and corn supplier, Brazil is on track to pass the United States and become the largest cotton exporter in the very near future," said the National Cotton Council, an umbrella organization for the U.S. cotton industry.

Battered by drought and rising costs, U.S. cotton growers will devote more of their land to corn, wheat and soybeans — crops that promise higher revenue this year — while sharply reducing their cotton plantings, said a survey released on Sunday. The National Cotton Council said its survey of growers indicated 11.4 million acres will be planted to cotton this spring, 17 percent less than last year.

Global demand for cotton would reach an all-time high this year, thanks to the economic resurgence from the pandemic that has driven cotton prices to their highest level in a decade, said the National Cotton Council on Sunday. Despite the sunny outlook, prospects for this year's crop are clouded by rising production costs, supply chain disruptions and uncertainties about future impacts of Covid-19.

For decades, leaders [in the Southwest] have sought a way to equitably share what’s left of the shrinking supply, but there has always been one stubborn sticking point: Farmers consume three-quarters of the region’s precious water, often to grow thirsty, inedible crops like cotton and hay. Many of them have been here for a century or more, and they aren’t about to leave. So, why can’t they grow something that sucks less water?(No paywall)

U.S. farmers are looking at their largest corn crop ever and a near-record soybean harvest, with huge stockpiles of both crops persisting into fall 2021, said the USDA on Wednesday. Some 2.8 billion bushels of corn would remain in the bin when next year's crop is mature, the largest carry-over since the Reagan era.

With the Sino-U.S. trade war unresolved, the Trump administration released $3.625 billion in trade-war payments to farmers and ranchers on Friday to offset losses on 2019 production. Payments will begin this week and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said they "will give farmers, who have had a tough year due to unfair trade retaliation and natural disasters, much needed funds in time for Thanksgiving.”

Cotton growers plan to expand their plantings by a sharp 3 percent this spring, taking away land from soybeans, the most prominent casualty of the Sino-U.S. trade war, said the National Cotton Council over the weekend. Meanwhile, the USDA said the soybean stockpile will double in size by the time this year's crop is ready to harvest, creating the largest "carryover" ever.

For Georgia farmers, Hurricane Michael is "the most widespread and devastating hurricane in recollection," said state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black. More than 92 poultry barns, housing more than 2 million birds, were destroyed; cotton growers suffered massive losses; and pecan growers lost trees for the third year in a row to a hurricane.

The House and Senate made relatively few changes to the farm program in passing separate versions of the new farm bill. The next step is to reconcile differences in the bills, and the cotton industry's desire to protect its subsidies is just one of a long list of likely flashpoints.

For the second time, the Agriculture Department will give cotton growers up to $40,000 each to offset low market prices, with payments keyed to the local cost of separating cotton fiber from its seed. The new cotton ginning cost-share payments will cover the 2016 crop. The USDA offered $300 million in aid for 2015 cotton when the Obama administration created the supposed one-time assistance.

In a new study, published in the December 2017 issue of the journal Weed Science, University of Wyoming weed scientist Andrew Kniss finds that GE corn does not produce increased herbicide resistance in weeds relative to non-GE crops, but that soybean and cotton plantings do — but only to a limited extent. (No paywall)