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Missouri brings in early rice crop, variable cotton

Missouri’s southern crops of rice and cotton have had an eventful year. With farmers harvesting an early, mostly good rice crop, cotton is showing mixed results due to weather variety.

Planting dates and spring weather play a big role for both crops, widely grown and irrigated in southeast Missouri’s Bootheel region.

University of Missouri Extension rice specialist Justin Chlapecka said Missouri had 218,000 planted rice acres this year, higher than normal due to rice being more profitable than other crop options at the moment. Also, planting began early due to fairly dry conditions early in the spring.

“It’s been a good year for us,” he said. “We got everything started early. Pretty much everyone who wanted to plant the first half of April planted the first half of April. Usually the earlier we get it planted the better we do.”

Chlapecka said some timely spring rains also helped activate herbicides. However, heavier rains in May prevented some fields from getting sprayed in a timely manner.

It was also challenging getting nitrogen on dry ground before rice fields were flooded with irrigation water, he said.

Overall, planting was about 10 days early, and he said the crop has generally continued to be about 10 days ahead of schedule, including the timing of harvest. Speaking on Sept. 4, Chlapecka said rice harvest is about 30-40% done. Usually the rice harvest is starting around that date.

Yield reports so far have been fairly good.

“I’ve not heard of any bad yields,” Chlapecka said. “So far it’s been pretty good.”

He said he expects rice acreage to remain higher than normal due to tight or negative profit margins on other crops.

“Rice is not great, but it’s not as bad as everything else,” he said.

MU Extension cotton specialist Bradley Wilson said the cotton crop varies across the region.

“You could probably split the Bootheel in half and talk about it as two different stories,” he said. “The southern half for most of the year had a really good year. We planted earlier than we usually do. We got started in April.”

Wilson said cotton planting is usually done in the first half of May. In addition to the early start, he said the southern part of the Bootheel got some spring rains to get things started but not an excessive amount.

“The southern half of the Bootheel has had a pretty good year,” he said. “The cotton crop looks really good in the southern half. They had good conditions — not too much rain that held them back.”

He said cotton in that area will likely see a lot of defoliation this week with harvest time creeping closer.

The northern half of the Bootheel has dealt with more challenges, Wilson said.

“The northern half, we had a lot of rainfall throughout May and some replanting especially in the low ends of fields,” he said. “Some of them have replanted at least twice.”

The northern part of Missouri’s cotton-growing region has also faced some significant hail damage in places, Wilson said. Even within that northern half of the Bootheel, some cotton looks a lot better than other fields.

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