Valley cotton beats expectations, but the industry keeps shrinking

Weather conditions early last week were sunny, dry and fiercely hot: in other words, good weather to harvest cotton in.

That ideal weather blanketed Monday about 4,000 acres of cotton remaining to harvest in the Rio Grande Valley out of 65,000 acres of the crop carried to harvest, a crop that Edcouch-area farmer Brian Jones says produced about 10-15% above average yield despite growing long-term challenges and an overall reduction of scope in the industry. 

Jones — who’s also a state director with Texas Farm Bureau — farms corn, grain sorghum and cotton.

This year Valley farmers planted about 105,000 acres of cotton, perhaps a third of which never sprouted, he said.