Cool Weather May Hurt Cotton Farming

[Desertdog]

For some reason, I just love it when Mother Nature doesn't go along with the "Global Warming" crowd.


Cool Weather May Hurt Cotton Farming
By BETSY BLANEY
Associated Press Writer
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/natgen/2007/may/15/051508027.html

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) - Cotton producer Weldon Melton has planted most of his fields, but the seedlings could be in trouble if cooler-than-normal temperatures continue.

Melton, like a lot of farmers in the nation's leading cotton-producing state, has gone from dealing with brutal droughts in recent years to suddenly hoping things will dry out and heat up.

"If we have two or three days with cool temps, it could hurt it," said Melton, who farms near Plainview about 45 miles north of Lubbock. "The cool nights are what will bother us more."

Soil temperatures need to average about 60 degrees for planted cottonseed to germinate and begin to grow. But daytime temperatures in the Lubbock area have been as much as 4 degrees below normal this month and heavy rains - 2.22 inches above normal for May alone - have also chilled cotton fields.

"Cool and wet weather means that the seed is setting in chilly ground and that is not conducive to rapid and healthy growth," said Roger Haldenby, spokesman for Plains Cotton Growers, which serves 41 counties that make up the world's largest cotton patch.

If the seedlings don't start growing within about two weeks, producers have to decide whether to replant or go to another crop. Warmer temperatures are in the forecast for this week, but some heavy rain is, too. Farmers need things to warm up as soon as possible for healthy crops by harvest time in late September or early October.

"It's imperative that we get the bulk of our acreage planted in the month of May to ensure the crop matures adequately," Plains Cotton Growers spokesman Shawn Wade said. "It's normal springtime weather, dodging storms and getting into the fields."

Cotton producers also need ample soil moisture before planting and then need a planting rain afterward. But recent heavy rains have prevented many growers from getting into their fields to plant. Those growers who haven't planted are awaiting higher soil temperatures.

The rains are a big shift from last year. In 2006 agriculture in Texas took sizable hit from drought. Losses of $4.1 billion hit the livestock and crop sectors, the worst single-year ever.

[Iain]

Quick, someone discuss weather as though it were climate. Again.

The only thing in that article that has any vague relevance to the GW discussion is the mention of 'brutal droughts in recent years'. Not that this would be what is picked up and run with around here...

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Hmm.  We'll have to make up for the lack of cotton with increased production of synthetic fibers and fabrics. 

Drill more oil!

 

[Manedwolf]

Hmm.  We'll have to make up for the lack of cotton with increased production of synthetic fibers and fabrics. 

Drill more oil!

 

Just watch, now they'll claim it's a reason to subsidize pot hemp to replace cotton crops. (Yes, I know they're slightly different, but it's never farmers clamoring for hemp, only hippies. And hemp fields make good cover for some pot plants.)

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Quick, someone discuss weather as though it were climate. Again.

Honestly, why would anyone care about the empirical data of what is actually happening?  It's so much easier to instead rely upon the consensus of a bunch of agenda driven pseudo-scientists.

[Iain]

What, you mean the 'empirical data' from one article discussing one month of one year - in one region?

The conspiracy theory meme is so 1963.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

If the article was reporting on a brief cold snap, then you might have a point.  It isn't, so you don't. 

Weather is what happens over a day or three.  Climate is what the prevailing weather patterns average out to over a period of time.  So which is this article addressing, the weather on any particular day, or the cumulative average effects over an entire growing season?

The discussion of soil temperatures is the dead giveaway.  Soil temperatures won't react much to daily fluctuations in weather, but they'll react strongly to long-term averages.  (Maybe you had to be born and raised in farm country to catch this.)

[Iain]

Climate - Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the “average weather”, or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). - IPCC, those discredited hacks.

Weather -  The term usually refers to the activity of these phenomena over short periods (hours or days)

Now. look at the article again. The farmer concerned hasn't even planted all his fields yet, most but not all. He is concerned about the prevailing weather conditions so far in the month of May. Cold snap - perhaps not, perhaps it is a slightly longer term condition than a 'snap', but the month of May fails well short of a period that could be described as 'climate'.

This is not an 'entire growing season' we are talking about, if he had planted crops in October we might be. But again, he hasn't planted all his fields yet. An unseasonably cold May is causing him worries. Soil does not respond to 'long term averages' that we could refer to as climate, unless we redefine climate as being a period of a couple of weeks. A few days of warm weather will warm soil, it doesn't require years of warm weather to warm soil.

Now, and this evidence is no more and no less anecdotal than this article, gardening friends of mine are concerned about the possibility of late frosts around here, not because there is a trend to this, but because the weather has been so warm lately that there is a lot of tender growth about. But that would never be accepted as 'empirical evidence' around here, and it isn't. Why call this article 'empirical evidence'? It's evidence of nothing but slightly unusual weather conditions in one small area of the globe. Some years are wetter, some are colder - long term averages (climate) tell us what is going on long term, not monthly, and the accepted scientific evidence states that things are getting warmer on average.

So, I still have a point.

[Tallpine]

Forget global warming, I'm really worried about this:

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/%7Etcox/localgroup/

Andromeda galaxy to collide with our own Milky Way 

[Manedwolf]

Forget global warming, I'm really worried about this:

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/%7Etcox/localgroup/

Andromeda galaxy to collide with our own Milky Way 

Okay. The universe has a stupid sense of humor. Two galaxies with NOTHING all around for greater distances than most people can fathom...and the galaxies are going to hit each other. That's like a pin on the entire Atlantic Ocean hitting another pin, the only other one anywhere in all that distance.

Wonder if we can get insurance. But where do you take a dinged-up galaxy to be fixed? 

[Eleven Mike]

Great.  More distraction from imperialist neo-cons like Tallpine.  Oh, don't worry about the global warming that will kill us all in ten years.  We should go on some fool's errand to Andromeda, based on what will probably turn out to be faulty intelligence, to deal with something that isn't a direct threat to us. 

Wake up, America!!

[Tallpine]

Well, maybe there's oil on Andromeda

And I bet the Andromedians would like to be liberated from tyranny and taught how to live in peace and democracy.  If not, we can just kill them. 

[Manedwolf]

Well, maybe there's oil on Andromeda

And I bet the Andromedians would like to be liberated from tyranny and taught how to live in peace and democracy.  If not, we can just kill them. 

Great, an interstellar war caused by an argument over whose galaxy hit whose. 

[Tallpine]

We have the right of way

[stevelyn]

Quick, someone discuss weather as though it were climate. Again.

The sky is still falling? Again?

[Dixie_Amazon]

Cotton prices are down and a lot of cotton farmers are planting corn instead. Shorter growing season and the demand for ethanol is making corn very attractive to them.

[onions!]

Isn't Andromeda where the Left Side White's were oppressing the Right Side White's?

[HankB]

Quick, someone discuss weather as though it were climate. Again.

As the global warming people did in 2005 when they asserted - vigorously, repeatedly, and insistently! - that 2006 would be a terrible hurricane year due to global warming?

Of course, they provided lots of excuses - from El Nino to Sahara sands - to explain the total absence of hurricanes hitting CONUS in '06, and why they were right even though their predictions weren't. 

[Brad Johnson]

The first few inch or so of soil will cool and warm with daily temp variations.  Once you are down a few inches you get into a more stable environment, thermally speaking.  Very cool nights plus a lot of moisture (temp reduction by evaporation) will drive soil surface temps down below what is necessary for proper germination.  Plus, wet soil can cause a seed to rot before it has a chance to germinate.

So, please, stop arguning over the whole climate/weather thing.  This is a short-term thing dealing with the planting and germination of cotton right now.

For those that weren't brought up in ag country, farmers and ranchers would gripe about the weather if it was made to order for them.  Any day that isn't 110 deg in the shade will be referred to as "a cold snap."  It's just their way.  Get over it.

Brad