The Texas cotton harvest is all over the board this year, a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension cotton specialist said.
"The Rio Grande had a pretty good year, and the upper Gulf Coast had a great year," said Dr. Gaylon Morgan, AgriLife Extension state cotton specialist. "Right in between, with the Corpus Christi area, it was a complete disaster. And from what I've seen in the Rolling Pains, it is more or less the exact same thing.
"And the South Plains, (it was) more or less the same thing. From my conversations with the regional cotton specialist there, Mark (Kelley), it just depends upon whether you were under one of those timely scattered showers and how much irrigation water you had."
Morgan reported yields were "about average" in the Rio Grande Valley. In the Coastal Bend, he reported nearly everything was zeroed out by insurance adjusters and destroyed.
"But then you move 60 miles to the upper Gulf Coast and they had one of the better crops they've had in years in terms of yield," Morgan said.
Sixty to seventy percent of the Rolling Plains crop was mowed down, he said, including nearly all the dryland. Some of the irrigated fields there had decent yields.
"From talking to irrigated farmers out there, it depended on how much water they had," he said. "I saw some irrigated fields that looked horrible because the folks ran out of water and didn't get any help from Mother Nature."