Lake levels at Corpus Christi drop at ‘concerning rate’<\/a><\/p>\nSo far, the region has seen significantly less rainfall than usual. As of Oct. 20, Corpus Christi is 4.57 inches below the climatological average for September and October.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t have those big tropical events that give us the big soaking rain, so the profile this year is a little lower than we’d typically like to see. From now till next March, typically, it doesn’t rain that much,” said Dr. Josh McGinty, associate professor and extension agronomist with Texas A&M.<\/p>\n
While dry conditions are good for a cotton harvest, rainfall is crucial afterward to replenish soil moisture in preparation for spring planting. With La Ni\u00f1a now underway \u2014 a climate pattern known for bringing warmer and drier winters to South Texas \u2014 growers are bracing for another challenging season.<\/p>\n
“We can’t try and outguess the weather. If we could, it’d be simple,” said Charles Ring, a farmer in St. Paul, Texas. “So, if you switch from one crop to another, you may make the wrong decision, and this year would be a good example. It didn’t rain early on in the year. Grain and corn didn’t produce. It got hot and dry, and then we got late rains. That made us a cotton crop.”<\/p>\n
In anticipation of drier-than-average conditions, farmers may choose to scale back on inputs like fertilizer or opt for lower-cost seed varieties. But those choices come with risks.<\/p>\n
Scaling back financially can hurt profitability if the weather unexpectedly improves.<\/p>\n
“You’re trying to hedge your risk, and with hedging risk means that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Ring said.<\/p>\n
For many South Texas farmers, that means planting a mix of cotton, corn, and sorghum \u2014 each with different tolerances to temperature and moisture. Corn requires deep soil moisture and cooler temperatures during pollination in late spring, while cotton is more heat and drought tolerant.<\/p>\n
Although crop insurance is available to protect against some weather-related losses, it doesn\u2019t guarantee profitability.<\/p>\n
“You cannot depend on cotton insurance or grain insurance to make you money. That’s not what it’s designed for,” Ring said.<\/p>\n
As weather patterns continue to be unpredictable, local growers say their best strategy remains diversification \u2014 and hope that nature is on their side when the next growing season begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid a dry fall and forecasts of La Ni\u00f1a conditions, farmers are beginning to make decisions for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-13315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}