2025 Cotton Meeting on Tuesday Kick Starts the '25 growing season 2-19-2025 While farmers are hanging on to hope for selling the 2024 cotton crop (about a half a year before the next crop begins harvest), time marches forward and we are 2 months and a piece from putting seed in the ground for 2025. Certainly, we would love to be completely finished with one year before starting the next, but everybody's marketing plan for 2024 is to stay long in the market either by storing, putting it on basis, or selling and buying call options (at least 90% of production). The Annual Virginia Cotton Growers meeting is always that catalyst to get our minds thinking about this year. Yesterday we had a nice peak into the future for 2025 cotton:
Projections put a huge drop in 2025 acreage across the United States. Even though new crop is bumping over 70 cents, this acreage drop is one of the paths to price recovery into better numbers.
With low prices and or disasters we are in the territory for the safety net to activate. The cotton safety net supports our success more than any other commodity and is projected at $86 for the 2024 crop. (from the meeting yesterday). We have not had much need for safety net in the last 3 years, but during the 3 years before that, they averaged over $100.
Potential for 2025 farm bill with increased price support level is in the works. Although some higher priorities will make this difficult to get done quickly.
Presenters from Agronomy, Entomology, and Pathology point to practices that can either increase our cotton success through return on investment, better defensive strategies, or reduction of unproven inputs, and key steps to higher yield. Some items I took notes on were:
Pix fine tuning. Our rates are too low and too late on aggressive growing cotton and late planting dates. Early & low-rate pix prior to matchhead did not matter (4 oz. on short cotton), A third Pix trip did not change much but did not hurt anything. Very late August applications were not studied.
Seed population vs final stand. 2 plants/foot allow for the best yield and fruit architecture. In good planting conditions 2.5 seed per foot easily achieves this which is 36K seed/ac.)
Aldicarb improved yield even when no nematodes and on ThryvOn. Asiatic Garden beetle is hit us two years in a row and seems to be the most important insect that most acres will not get.
Foliar disease creates yield loss on cotton over 50 inches when target spot and/or Areolate Mildew are present and wet humid conditions are present in the late stages of maturity. There appears to be variety sensitivity to these diseases and definitely it is correlated to large canopies and wet humid periods during August into early September.
Selecting the top performing varieties in many locations and multiple years makes more yield than experimenting with the ones that fit niche situations or that did really good in one year. See the 2025 report card.?
In the coming weeks, we have the opportunity for in depth investigation into best management practices although we are starting from a high bar already in this region. It’s not like we are messing up, but this territory has always been fun and challenging to have a career in as farmers are not satisfied with where they are and are open minded about making changes that will enhance their success.
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