Outlook bleak for Valley's sorghum, cotton crops

HARLINGEN -- Record July rainfall likely damaged as much as 40 percent of the Rio Grande Valley's sorghum crop, worth about $48 million, an official said Wednesday.

The region's cotton crop has fared no better, officials said.

Soggy fields will prevent farmers from using their combines to harvest their sorghum crop for about 10 days, said Craig Elkins, general manager of Port Elevator-Brownsville, a terminal export elevator capable of storing 3 million bushels for transport by truck, railcar, barge or other vessel.

The heavy rain caused much of the Valley's sorghum crop to sprout, which lowers its quality, said Elkins. He noted some fields received 10 inches of rainfall in recent days.

"When the seed sprouts, it swells up and falls off the plant," Elkins said. "There's going to be a lot that's going to fall off the (plant) before the combine can cut it."

Farmers harvested about 60 percent before a weather system brought several days of rain to the region starting Friday last week, Elkins said. But soggy fields likely will need 10 days to two weeks to dry out enough for farmers to get back in with machines to continue the harvest.

Farmer Tudor Uhlhorn has 974 acres of sorghum in Cameron County. He estimated the rain may have damaged about 30 of his 234 acres of the crop in Bayview - not enough to constitute what he would consider widespread damage.

"It's not as bad as we thought," Uhlhorn said.

This year, Valley farmers were expected to harvest $120 million worth of sorghum, most of which is used for livestock feed, he said.

The region's sorghum losses, estimated at $48 million, will have a ripple effect within the Valley's agriculture industry, Elkins predicts.

"Think about other parts of the industry: the fertilizer dealers, the grain elevators, the equipment dealers," he said.

Cotton outlook grim

The Valley's dry-land cotton crop is also in peril after 6 inches of rain in less than a week, farmers said.

This year, farmers planted about 600,000 acres of dry-land cotton in this region, compared with about 300,000 acres of irrigated cotton, said John Norman, a crop consultant who previously served as an extension specialist for the Texas A&M Agricultural Extension Service in Weslaco.

Farmers were preparing to begin the dry-land cotton harvest when the rain came, said Lamar Smith, who farms the crop north of Harlingen.

"It's going to hurt it to a certain degree," Smith said of the rainfall's effect on the crop.

Uhlhorn, for his part, said he has found no major damage to his dry-land cotton east of Rio Hondo. But until farmers can get into their fields, they won't really know how much of their crop was damaged.

"The full extent of damage won't be known for a week or two," Uhlhorn said.

Across much of the Valley's dry-land cotton fields, the rain opened the cotton's bolls, sprouting the plants' seeds, Smith said.

While rain may only have damaged cotton lint, it probably ruined cottonseed, which has more than doubled in price in recent years, Norman said.

"The cottonseed loss is significant," said Norman, noting most seed is used to make cooking oil.

For every 750 pounds of lint, a good cotton crop yields about 2,100 pounds of seed, he said.

This year, cottonseed jumped in price to $300 a ton, up from $100 to $125 a ton three years ago, Norman said.

More to worry about

It's not just the deluge's direct effect on crops that is troubling farmers. The rain also creates good breeding conditions for insects that lower the quality of cotton lint, said LeRoy Rock, a cotton specialist at the Texas A&M Extension office.

Like some farmers, Smith blamed the crop losses on what he called changing weather patterns.

In the Valley, rain was typically scarce in July up until recent years, he said. But last year - and now this year - July rains have soaked farmers' fields.

"Weather patterns seem to be changing," said Smith, who has been farming for about 40 years. "We go long stretches without rain and when we get rain, we get a ton of rain. It's just crazy."

From July 4 through Tuesday, about 6.1 inches of rain fell in the Harlingen area, said Greg Flatt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Brownsville.

Heavy rainfall Saturday and Monday set records for those dates, he said. And more rainfall is possible over the next few days.

Today's chance of rain is a 30 percent, with the likelihood dropping to 20 percent through the weekend, Flatt said.