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May 6, 2002

WESLACO – In his 30 years as an expert on the Rio Grande Valley's cotton and grain crops, John Norman has never seen worse spring crops than what he's seeing today.

"Even reminiscing back to the ‘50s, when I was a boy and we had the worse drought ever recorded, I don't recall ever seeing such poor early season crop conditions," said the Texas Cooperative Extension cotton IPM entomologist at Weslaco.

"The bad news is, it could get worse if significant rainfall doesn't come by mid-May," Norman said. "If we don't get rain soon, those fields that now appear to be doing well will be severely damaged. The current situation gets worse with each passing day."

What Norman is seeing are large patches of barren soil in fields where lush green crops once grew from property line to property line; mini-sand dunes building up on dirt banks that farmers cut on the perimeter of their fields in futile efforts to build wind blocks; and severe stress on plants that Norman fears will soon shut down completely for lack of moisture.

In addition to the years-long drought and lack of water reserves in several Valley irrigation districts, an unusual mix of weather events have combined to worsen current crop conditions.

"Cold weather early in the year delayed planting, which delayed maturity," Norman said. "Then we'd have one cold day, followed by a hot day, followed by another cold day. That inconsistency in temperatures didn't allow the new plants to adjust to any one weather condition and mature properly. Then we got those dry, hot winds that sandblasted plants and sucked moisture from both the plants and soil."

Normal yields for the Valley's cotton crop, by far the area's largest and once most-lucrative crop, average 500 pounds of lint per acre. Normal grain sorghum yields are 4,500 pounds of grain per acre. But this is anything but a normal year.

"As early as we are into this 2002 season, I can already tell you our yields are far below average and dropping daily," Norman said.

The only good news in the current situation? Norman said damaging insect activity is relatively low, meaning overall expenditures for insect control are also low. But drought attracts and can increase insects such as aphids and spider mites, provided there's plant material on which to survive.

"We estimate Valley growers planted less than 200,000 acres of cotton this year and 450,000 acres of grain sorghum. But that's what was planted. Some of these plants never came up and those that did are under tremendous stress right now," Norman said.