A Perfect Winter for U.S. Cotton?

It’s time for your Southeast Regional Ag News. On the Ag Information Network, I’m Haylie Shipp.

Well, we made it through Halloween and with that it feels like tomorrow’s Christmas, right? The calendar always goes quickly, but we also now have some perspective on what sort of a winter we might need to help out the cotton crop.

Eric Snodgrass, Science Fellow and Principal Atmospheric Scientist with Nutrien Ag Solutions…

“We need to get drought reduced in a big way. That’s one of our biggest concerns is that soil moisture values that are at extremely low levels of the Mississippi River and some of the patchy drought that’s in the southeast need to be eliminated throughout the winter timeframe.”

Snodgrass says if there’s hope it’s in El Niño …

“El Niño is typically a pretty good signal for much of the cotton belt to be wet throughout winter. Also unfortunately means we tend to have risk of our old season storm and severe weather but at the same time I think we need to balance out the desperate need for water versus some of the other risks that come along with that. So the good news is this El Niño continues to gain influence. It is still yet to become the most dominant player internationally. A couple of other sub-season things are kind of influencing El Niño, but I have confidence that nearly every long-range forecast that we have access to plus our own statistical analysis does suggest that we hit our drought areas pretty hard from November to March which would be great.”

Something to keep an eye on, he says this El Niño could cause drought risk in places like Australia.