Georgia farmers were hoping Hurricane Bertha would help soak
their parched peanut and cotton fields. But the massive storm
turned northward, and the hot sun kept beating down on
cropland.

No one hoped Bertha would hit Georgia. But many desperately
wanted rain from the storm’s outer edge.

Cotton and peanuts have entered critical reproductive stages
when their water needs are high. Cotton has to have water to
fruit and produce fiber. Peanuts need it to bloom and produce
the “pegs” that support peanut pods.

In all, cotton and peanuts have an economic impact of more
than $3.6 billion in Georgia. And without regular rains, cotton
and peanut farmers could face a disaster.

Many farmers rely on irrigation when rains don’t come. But
with only a third of Georgia’s cotton and just over half its
peanut acreage under irrigation, these and other crops are
slowly drying up.

“In most areas, it’s very hard to make a cotton crop
with only irrigation,” said Steve M. Brown, a cotton
agronomist with the University of Georgia Extension Service.
Farmers’ irrigation systems can’t always supply as much water as
cotton needs.

Dry weather into early July in Georgia and much of the
Southeast cotton belt just about shut down growth in cotton
plants. Without water, the plants can’t take up nutrients that
help form the cotton fruits, or bolls, that produce the
fiber.

Brown said scattered showers can have another effect on
cotton: widely gapped boll production. Cotton plants reach a
“cutout” point when they stop producing the blooms
that later form bolls. After that cutout, it takes about three
weeks to start blooming again.

When the plants reach cutout before it rains, he said, the
resulting gap in the bolls’ maturity makes it hard to time
harvesting. Some bolls are ready to pick, while others on the
same plant may still need 30 more days.

There is some good news. The insects farmers usually battle
have hardly shown up this year. “We’re almost scared —
it’s that light,” Brown said.

Through mid-July, Georgia farmers had sprayed insecticides on
less than 10 percent of their cotton acres. In an average year,
they would have sprayed nearly all of it.

And many farmers who had sprayed had sprayed only once. Often
they have sprayed four or five times by mid-July.

In 1995, Georgia farmers planted 1.5 million acres of cotton
and harvested nearly all of it. That puts Georgia third in the
nation behind Texas and California. The ’95 Georgia crop, the
state’s largest since 1918, was valued at $791 million, up 32
percent over ’94.

For peanuts, “our most critical water-need period
extends from now until Labor Day,” said John Beasley, an
Extension Service peanut agronomist. Nearly all of the Georgia
crop is in the bloom stage or older.

During that time, Georgia peanuts need more than 2 inches of
water per week to grow the pegs and pods needed to make a good
crop.

Potential yields are already dropping. “Until
substantial rain falls on the crop,” he said, “we’ll
keep losing yield. We won’t know for certain how much yield we
will lose until we harvest in September and October.”

Hot, dry weather means, too, that when rain does fall, it
evaporates quickly. Beasley said nearly one-third of an inch of
water evaporates from the soil every day.

Dry fields create another problem. Any pesticide, whether for
insects, weeds or disease, needs water to work effectively.

Beasley said a small amount of rain can increase the risk of
a common peanut disease, too. “Hot, humid conditions favor
leaf spot development,” he said. “So peanut farmers
have to stay on a 10- to 14-day spray schedule or follow a leaf
spot
advisory system.”