When rain keeps on dropping, you can’t pick very much cotton.
Cotton
that gets wet loses its value. And, for Georgia farmers, that’s
no reason
to whistle Dixie.

“We’ve had over 20 inches of rain since Sept. 25,” said Steve
Brown, a University of Georgia
Extension
Service agronomist. “Rain on cotton that’s ready to harvest
really
declines its color, its quality, its grade and makes for
considerable losses
to Georgia farmers.”

Brown estimates those losses to be between $50 million and
$100 million
just in quality factors alone in the 1997 Georgia crop. The crop
has already
been damaged by late-summer drought and insects.

Last year, Georgia ranked third in the nation’s cotton
production, behind
Texas and California, bringing in more than 2 million bales from
nearly
1.35 million acres harvested.

“Statistics indicate that we still have harvested only about
77 percent
of our crop, compared to the more than 90 percent normally
harvested at
this time,” Brown said. “Almost 25 percent of the crop is still
in the
field and farmers are really pushing to get it out.”

Continued rainy weather is halting the harvest.

“A lot of folks are discouraged,” Brown said. “Fields are so
wet, it’s
going to take considerable drying before they can get back in
and harvest.”

Patience has always been the hallmark of prudent farmers, and
this year
is no different.

“Keep plugging,” Brown advised. “When you get days of
sunshine that
allow you back in the field, try to make the most of it. Get
just as much
cotton as absolutely possible.”

Getting in the field is a cinch.ÿ Getting out of the
field is a
sticky and expensive problem for farmers.

“Most farmers who have picked cotton the past few weeks have
been stuck
numerous times, too many to count,” Brown said. “There is so
much incentive
to get in the field.ÿ And yet when you get stuck, there’s a
lot of
machinery that can be bent and twisted and damaged. So it’s a
trade- off.”

Dry weather is still a ways off as rain still dominates the
forecast.

“It just means more delayed harvest,” Brown said. “We’re
going to see
cotton harvested well into January, I suspect, in some areas of
the state.”

Mother Nature did keep Jack Frost at bay until mid-November,
which Brown
says is the best farmers can hope for.

“The cool weather really hasn’t been positive or negative,”
he said.
“We didn’t get an early October freeze. That would have killed
us.ÿ
But not seeing cold weather until mid-November in most places in
Georgia
probably helped us.ÿ The plants were able to make a little
more cotton
that we otherwise would have lost.”

Despite widespread drought, last year’s state average
production was
747 pounds per acre. Since August, this year’s crop estimates
have been
coming down, down, down, Brown said. The latest USDA
estimate, released Dec. 10, predicts a harvest of 662 pounds per
acre in
Georgia.

“We could wind up with an average of 100 pounds below last
year,” he
said. “It may even be more than that.”