A Peak Behind the Cotton Weather Curtain
It’s time for your Southeast Regional AgNews. On the Ag Information Network, I am Haylie Shipp.
Today we’re taking a peak behind the weather curtain with Brad Rippey, Agricultural Meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And those curtains? They’re made of cotton and so too is the focus of this forecast.
Rippey prefaced the discussion by acknowledging a much more attractive drought monitor map nationwide than what we saw at this time last year…
“Specifically talking about cotton, it’s even better news right now. We have just over 10% of the U.S. cotton production area currently experiencing drought and if you specifically focus on Texas, less than 5% of the cotton production area in drought as we head into the 2024 growing season. So those numbers are even better than the national numbers and it is reflective of this stormy weather across the south during El Nino. Now a year ago, if we were talking at this time a year ago, we had almost half of the U.S. Cotton Belt in drought, so a huge improvement from the early part of the planting season 2023 versus 2024.”
Again Brad Rippey, Agricultural Meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For more agricultural news, visit us online at AgInfo.NET.
