U.S. Drought Monitor<\/a>, Crosby County is experiencing moderate drought. Severe to exceptional drought stretches across other parts of the Texas Panhandle and South Plains.<\/p>\nThe conditions have been especially difficult for dryland cotton. Arthur said his dryland cotton crop is unlikely to be harvested. His irrigated cotton has held on better, but yield potential is declining.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe right now in my immediate area, all the irrigated cotton will be harvested, but we are losing yield daily until we get a rainfall to help out,\u201d he told the Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network.<\/p>\n
Arthur said the area has received just over 5 inches of rain since Jan. 1. Most fell between mid-May and early June and helped farmers get cotton planted and established.<\/p>\n
Rainfall has been limited since then, meaning irrigation has carried much of the crop through the summer. Arthur said his farm typically applies about 8 inches of irrigation water during the growing season. This year, some fields have already received 10 to 12 inches.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not too late to have some help from rainfall if it was to come along to finish out the crop,\u201d Arthur said. \u201cBut we probably have at least another 20 days of irrigation if we don\u2019t get rain, which is beginning to get expensive for the pumping cost.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those irrigation demands come as water levels in the Ogallala Aquifer continue to decline. Farmers have adopted improved water management practices to make better use of limited supplies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done better water management and techniques that we have learned and experienced through research that has helped us push our declining water more so that we can basically make as much or more with less,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Another dry year is adding to several years of difficult conditions. Arthur considers 2021 the last wet year in his area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been promised by the weatherman that El Ni\u00f1o is coming in, which usually gives us a wetter year, but we\u2019re not seeing that until late fall into winter,\u201d Arthur said. \u201cMother Nature is one of those issues that we have in farming that we have no control over. So, we just take it day by day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Emmy PowellCommunications Specialist Hot, dry weather is taking a toll on crops across the Texas South Plains.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43022,23218,6253,144071,374,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-412935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-cotton","tag-crosby-county","tag-farmer","tag-lloyd-arthur","tag-south-plains","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412935","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=412935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}