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Owen Taylor, Editor

COTTON NEWS:

Closing Cotton, 11-12: Closes Lower in Heavy Dealings. (Read More)

Delta Cotton Harvest Reports, 11-12: Struggling To Finish The 2009 Crop (Read More)

Southeast Cotton Harvest Report, 11-12: Some progress, but Ida is a concern (Read More)

Audio: Cotton Conference Call, 11-12: Ag Marketing Network panel discusses latest USDA report, possible market direction (Read More)

Opening Cotton, 11-12: Opening Cotton: Extends Sharp Midweek Downturn. (Read More)

K. Good's Farm Policy, 11-12: Climate Issues and Agriculture; Food Security; and Food Safety. (Read More)

Closing Cotton, 11-11: Market Tumbles from New 13-Month Highs (Read More)

Cotton Market Comments, Carl Anderson, 11-11: Adverse weather cuts U.S. Production 502,000 bales to smallest crop in 20 years. (Read More)

Resistant Weeds in the Future, 11-11: Weeds Harder to Kill in Soybeans, Rice, Corn, Wheat (Read More)

Texas: Subsurface Drip Irrigation, 11-11: If it works here, it will work anywhere. (Read More)

Texas Crop, Weather, 11-10: Pesticide applicator training set Dec. 1 and Dec. 3 at Overton. (Read More)

Weather: Making NOAA Climate Forecasts Useful to Farmers 11-9: Short-term variations or departures from the long-term averages (Read More)

Louisiana Food and Fiber, 11-9: Current production situation. (Read More)

Ag Report (E-Central La.), 11-9: Lots of cotton acres finished; harvestable soybeans are probably in the elevators; rice harvest going slow--patience, tracks and drainage required; eighty percent of intended wheat acres planted this past week.| (Read More)

Tennessee Market Highlights, 11-6: Crop market comments by Chuck Danehower; Livestock comments by Emmit L. Rawls. (Read More)

Arkansas Bi-Weekly Market Briefings, 11-6: Soybeans have traded sideways over the past four weeks; harvest moves into high gear; wheat lost momentum; cotton gets a boost; rice futures broke resistance (Read More)

Monsanto Opens Its First Research Center In China 11-4: Company recently signed research agreement with major Chinese university (Read More)

Arkansas: Impact of Rain is Being Felt in Chicot County: Cotton yields for 2009 cut in half, beans hit hard due to heavy rains in last 6 weeks (Read More)

Nunn Cotton Letter, 11-1: Still trying to estimate the Delta crop (Read More)

Mississippi Field Notes (Central Miss), 11-2: Corn - Is It Still A Contender For Mississippi Acreage? (Read More)

Mississippi Ag Report, USDA, November.: Mississippi cotton ginned as of October 15, 2009, represents only 1 percent of the production forecast of 540,000 bales. During same period last year, 22 percent of the cotton had been ginned. (Read More)

Mississippi Field Crops Newsletter, 10-28: Soybeans in fairly good condition; Heavy losses in corn; Cotton in poor condition. (Read More)

Arkansas Cotton Update, 10-24: Weather driving the market; harvest progress limited over the next week, chances of rain return. (Read More)

Louisiana Cotton Bulletin, 10-23: Atrocious crop development and harvest conditions (Read More)

Mississippi: Excessive fall rains leave the state soggy 10-22: A 7-week Autumn stretch plays havoc with 2009 crop, complicates 2010 planting (Read More)

 

North Carolina:

Will this be a "plant bug year" in cotton?

AgFax.Com - Your Online Ag News Source

By Jack Bacheler

North Carolina Extension Cotton Entomologist

This week we received a couple of reports of square retentions headed down toward 80% associated with sweep net samples in the 5 to 10 range per 100 sweeps – right about at the threshold level for plant bugs.

One consultant called to say he had been in some cotton fields on July 1 in the Battleboro area (near the Nash and Edgecombe county line) and found some fields in the 60% square retention range. In the cotton fields that we’ve checked this week, 90% or above square retention has been the norm. It’s hard to say at this point if we’ll be treating more than our typical small proportion of fields for plants bugs.

On one hand, if this hot dry weather continues, cotton will likely become increasingly unattractive to plant bugs.

On the other hand, alternative cultivated plant bug hosts like corn and various weed hosts are now drying down quickly, releasing adult plant bugs into nearby cotton.

In any event, this is a particularly good time to check square retention, with follow-up sweepings or ground cloth samplings, if needed to find out if plant bugs are the culprit for low square retention. If a foliar spray is triggered for plant bug levels just above the recommended threshold, chloronicotinoids (like Centric or Trimax Pro) are advised for their milder impact on beneficial arthropods, which in turn might help hold down possible subsequent cotton aphid and spider mite problems.

Brown Stink Bugs Coming?

Presently, hard-to-control brown stink bugs, in various crops such as field corn, appear to present at moderate to high levels and greatly outnumber green stink bugs. Early preemptive sprays for brown stink bugs, which may or may not materialize as economic pests on cotton in the coming weeks, are not advised.

Remember that our recommended thresholds for stink bugs are 50% internal boll damage during the first week of bloom and 30% during week two, so the odds of treating during the initial two weeks of bloom are slim. The threshold then drops to 10% for weeks 3 through 5 or 6 of bloom when cotton is the most vulnerable to yield loss from stink bug feeding on medium-sized bolls.