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Dolly Hits Southern Texas Cotton, Sorghum Crops |
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| US: July 25, 2008 | ||
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NEW YORK - The heavy rains spawned by Hurricane Dolly may have taken a big bite out of cotton and sorghum crops in southern Texas, an agricultural official said in a report on Thursday.
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"We could be suffering major losses in the cotton crop from Hurricane Dolly," Rod Santa Ana, an agriculture marketing specialist based in Weslaco, Texas, near where the storm made landfall, said in a report issued by Texas A&M University. The Rio Grande Valley's cotton and sorghum crops were heavily damaged by storms earlier in the month. More than 400,000 acres of sorghum and 92,000 acres of cotton were planted in the southern part of Texas. The amount sown to cotton in Texas totals 4.7 million acres, according to the US Agriculture Department. The state is the top cotton growing area and will plant more than half of all cotton sown in the United States in 2008/09. The 92,000 acres of cotton have not been harvested but are mature to the point it has either been defoliated or has opened bolls, said Santa Ana. While rains would be welcome for cotton while it is growing and maturing, it is bad when the cotton plant has open bolls. Santa Ana said rains would degrade the quality of the cotton lint used by textile mills. It also stains the cotton, and hurricane winds and pounding rain could knock the cotton bolls to the ground. "At which point, it (the cotton) would not be salvageable," he said, adding no firm figures will be available on the damage until after the storm passes and producers are able to get back in their fields. "But at this point, it doesn't look good." (Reporting by Rene Pastor; Editing by David Gregorio)
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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