I know, B-1 83 is an old, but the concept of cotton in Dalhart is hard to grasp. It's knee tall to me, and those that know, realize that isn't very tall ;-). How can they make money? I left Dumas in 1992, and 250 bu corn was top notch with 7000# milo (some 10,000) 100 bu irrigated wheat, and scattered soybeans. It seems anything grain related goes to the dairies of which there were zero then, and there are pivots where it was dryland wheat. Amazing.

Sunday Ag, weigh in.

For 7 years '85-'92. That song played every morning at 7 am when the local station started broadcasting.

Cotton moved north with warmer weather, better varieties, and growth regulators, Not to mention defoliants, when people used to mainly wait on a good freeze

When I was a kid and dinosaurs roamed the earth, everyone said that highway 70 was as far north as you can grow cotton. It runs east-west through Plainview

Basically, we're running out of water. About 25 years ago people who were getting low on water started trying cotton and having some success with it. Scientists with lots of letters behind their names, from places like College Station, and Lubbock , and San Angelo came up and started having meetings, telling us we couldn't do it. One guy was angrily slapping the podium telling us we wouldn't get enough heat units to open a single boll… right after we had some 1300 pound cotton harvested. So they opened a gin at Etter, and the biggest gin in north America is now at Spearman.

I have taken care of cotton that made 2300 pounds / acre up here where we can't grow it.

This year we got plenty of heat units, but it was too hot and even a lot of the cotton ran out of water. But the corn got cooked.

As we continue to run out of water, thirsty crops like corn are getting less common, and less thirsty crops like cotton are moving in.

Lots of forage sorghum for ensilage it appears.

B-1 83 said:

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Lots of forage sorghum for ensilage it appears.

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If you eat Sargento brand cheese, that's what it's made out of. The dairies love it, and it uses less water than corn.

The secret is cool nights. Physiologically it allows the plant to shift into reproductive and recovery processes the plant needs to create more bolls. It also keeps the plant shorter with modern varieties but the top end yield potential is probably 40-50% higher than anything on the coast.

It's also why Arizona grows such great cotton as well.

Worked with growers that had cotton crops all the way up towards Garden City, CO and CSU had cotton trials in Walsh, CO just recently.

Keep heading north and you'll find it in Kansas, too.

I even saw where they are doing field trials in South Dakota.

I've ginned in Kansas in January when modules froze to the module feeder bed. I'm not sure I want any part of ginning in South Dakota.

I think we'll see a shift towards more drought tolerant crops like cotton and sorghum as water or the lack thereof becomes more of an issue. There are spots of it here and there in the Delta, but its not king like it once was. 45 cent cotton will do that (early 2000's). Its interesting to see cotton in the field in places like Kansas. The folks over here learned a long time ago that growing corn without irrigation is a losing endeavor.

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I have taken care of cotton that made 2300 pounds / acre up here where we can't grow it.

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Thats an amazing factoid!

Grew up near the Coastal Bend in the 50's where 1/2 bale cotton (dryland) was standard. The boys down around Sinton/Taft could make a bale/acre when it rained. So ~ 5 times that is impressive.