Cotton growers eager for another shot

摘要

IT'S dry in much of Texas, but not as dry as it could be. Growers learned just how dry the state could get last year when they had to abandon more than 4 million acres of parched cotton. After the devastating 2011 crop across much of the Cotton Belt,Texas and Oklahoma producers are itching to make a 2012 crop. "We want to go back to actually raising a crop — producing and harvesting cotton," says Jones County, Texas, cotton grower Erick Richards. Richards says Rolling Plains producers are especially optimistic this year thanks to more moisture, and also the availability for the first time of Topguard (flutriafol) for cotton root rot, a disease that has plagued much of Texas for more than 130 years.