By Clint Thompson
The Georgia Cotton Commission and the University of Georgia (UGA) Extension Cotton Team caution growers against attempting a replant at this point in the calendar season.
A two-week span of wind and rain in June impacted some of Georgia’s cotton crop. It devastated acres in some areas. However, producers should not attempt a replant; whether that is cotton or another commodity.
Camp Hand, UGA Extension cotton agronomist, explains why.
“At this point, I’d be really hard pressed to find something that really works for us. In most cases, I’m going to say to leave it and get what you can out of it and again making sure that the insurance folks are involved, and they know what’s going on so that potentially we can make up for some losses,” Hand said.
“At this point, you’d be hard pressed to get a crop in. It was a really bad time for something like that to happen just because the people that decided to call it on that crop, they don’t really have any other options. In a lot of cases, soybeans would be a fine option, but the problem is that doesn’t fit with our peanut rotation. It’s an option, but it’s not a great option. On the other side, there’s grain sorghum but there’s certain herbicides that if you sprayed on your cotton, you can’t plant grain sorghum behind it. There’s logistical issues with grain sorghum as well. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t be trying to plant cotton right now, that’s for sure.”
Hand said the area most impacted is located in North Colquitt County.
“There was one pocket on the northern end of Colquitt County that got hit that bad which is a lot of cotton acres, and there’s going to be folks that leave it, see it through and get what they can out of it. There’s some that deal with recurring issues like whiteflies and things like that, who say it’s not even worth it,” Hand said. “Colquitt County’s consistently either first or second in terms of cotton acres in our state. That’s a big dent that gets hit right there for sure.
“In some places it was worse than others. Really by the time we were able to get in the field to do anything, we were behind the eight ball. It rained for about two weeks after all of that stuff. We couldn’t get in the field. There’s going to be some folks that wind up harrowing stuff up and calling it a loss for sure.”
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