What is in this article?:
- Cotton boosts Oklahoma corn and wheat rotation
- Fewer acres planted
- Double crop wheat after cotton
- Cotton is not as tall as it once was in Oklahoma.
- There’s still profit in those bolls.
- Cotton is great rotation with grains.
More About:
A LOADED COTTON STALK pleases Monty Kahle and his son Eric as they check crop prospects on the northern Oklahoma farm. Cotton is an important rotation crop with wheat and corn for the Kahle operation.
Double crop wheat after cotton
The Kahles have seen good results in hard red winter wheat planted extremely late. “For three years, we have planted wheat just after Thanksgiving in acres where cotton was just harvested,” Kahle says. “With help from good rains in the early spring this year, our wheat yielded from 48 to 54 bushels. It averaged about 5 to 10 bushels above our wheat-after-wheat yield.”
He credits cotton with improvements in soil nutrients, cleaning out weeds and breaking up disease and insect population cycles and helping boost wheat yields. “Rotation is important for a crop production program,” Kahle says. “And we know that prices will vary for all crops from year to year.
“If the Midwest sees a normal year for rainfall in 2013, corn prices will probably be down because planted acres are expected to be up. That should benefit cotton prices, because acres will probably be down again. So we see a good future in cotton in our northern region.”
