Longer harvest brings different blessings

By Jennifer M. Latzke

By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, most Kansas farmers are done with their fall harvest.

But, the Rose family, of Haviland, Kan., is still in the field.

They aren't late in cutting sorghum, or corn, or even soybeans. They're stripping cotton.

Four years ago, Merle Rose, his wife Beth, and son Shane, grew their first field of cotton as an experiment to see its usefulness on their family farm.

"We began growing the crop because of its water usage and we found it's also an excellent rotation with our corn and other crops," Shane Rose said. The varieties of Roundup Ready cotton are also a good clean up for Wheat fields with weed problems, he added. And, the family has seen a 10- to 15-bushel increase in their corn that's been grown in a field after cotton.

The Roses began their great cotton experiment by working closely with a crop consultant and the local High Plains Cotton Gin in Cullison, Kan. "Anyone who's looking to get into cotton for the first time should really get a good consultant who knows cotton," Shane said. That first year, they only planted a small amount, as a way to test the water. Now that they have more experience, though, they plant about 600 to 700 acres to cotton and rotate it with corn, sorghum, Wheat and soybeans.

With ever-decreasing water tables and increasing input costs, the Roses didn't go into the cotton business on a whim. They carefully researched their expenses and their inputs before taking the leap. The expenses for the Roses' cotton fields are about the same as their corn fields, but cotton can bring in better returns than corn and use one-third the water. "It's not a saving crop, but we use it as a good rotational clean-up," Merle said.

The Roses like to plant cotton when the soil temperature reaches the mid-50- to 60-degree range. "We still need to put it in early, but we try to plant when it's warmed up a bit," Merle said.

"Usually that's when we're done planting our corn and soybeans," Shane added. The Roses use strip tillage on their cotton fields, and try to do a little no-till in order to increase the available water in the soil profile. "We plant in 30-inch row spacings because our strippers are six-row machines. So, that means we plant 12 rows in a 16-row planter," Shane said. In their dryland corners on their irrigated circles, the family plants wheat.

"My advice, if I was going to plant cotton for the first time, I'd plant a portion of my land to it the first year," Shane said. "You have to learn to grow it."

"Take good soil samples and go deep because the crop will find the fertilizer that's there dormant in the soil," Merle added. "This is our fourth year growing it, and our first year that we're really comfortable with it."

The Roses, in working with their consultant and local gin, set a goal of one-bale cotton for their dryland fields, and three-bale cotton in their irrigated circles. "We've reached it every year, except last year, when we had hail," Merle Rose said. "It really hit us hard, and we got less than a bale per acre. But, usually, every year we've grown cotton our quality and our yields increase." The south central area of Kansas usually has good to high quality stripper cotton, Merle added.

In order to reach their harvest goals, the Roses pay special attention to the weed and insect pressure in their fields and scout regularly and often.

"This cotton, it spends half of its life growing and the other half just putting on bolls," Merle said. All that special attention pays off, though, after the crop is in the gin.

"We usually have good quality and low turnout," Merle said. Turnout at the gin refers to the amount of trash and foreign materials in the raw cotton. Trash is a big problem for ginners because it not only plays havoc with their equipment, but it also affects the cotton's end use. The Roses pay special attention at harvest time to plastic bags that can blow into their fields, as well as twine from hay bales, bark off the plant itself, and even tumbleweeds.

"Sometimes I can stop in the field and get most of it out of the machine's path," Shane said. "And, each row in the unit header can be raised individually so I can lift it up and over a problem in the row."

The family has its own equipment--two strippers, a module builder and boll buggies. When shopping for their first cotton stripper they went to a dealership in Texas for its experience and selection. Now that cotton is beginning to be more widespread, the dealerships in their vicinity are becoming more knowledgeable about cotton harvesting equipment and its upkeep.

"Our dealers in this area do very well to answer our questions," Merle said. "These are high maintenance machines, with brushes and batts that have to be replaced. We just put new saws on one machine." While it may take more time to do their own equipment maintenance, the Roses do so in order to keep their costs to a minimum. Also, there's a special satisfaction in knowing their machines inside and out.

Cotton harvest on the Rose farm begins after their fall crops are cut. Once they've applied the chemical boll openers and desiccants they wait for the leaves to drop and the humidity to go below 50 percent. They'll start stripping at about 40 percent humidity and will continue all the way up to 55 to 60 percent humidity before turning off the machines.

This year's cotton harvest looks to be on track. The Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service estimated Nov. 20, that 50 percent of the Kansas cotton crop has been harvested, compared with 65 percent harvested last year and 43 percent for the five-year average. The cotton condition was rated five percent very poor, 10 percent poor, 30 percent fair, 45 percent good and 10 percent excellent.

All of the Rose cotton goes to the High Plains Cotton Gin and this 2006 crop looks to meet their three-bale goals.

"All of our cotton goes into the marketing pool through the gin," Merle said. "Shane had one irrigated circle he kept out of the pool and marketed himself with help from the gin manager. But, if you're new to the crop, I'd advise you to go into the pool until you're comfortable with the market trends." The pool sells cotton all year long, he added, and sometimes it sells at really high prices, and sometimes it gets lower prices, but the farmer gets paid on the average.

Cotton may have started out as a grand experiment for the Roses, but it's turned into a great learning experience. It's been good to the Roses, and now they don't even mind the extended harvest season.

It just means they have more to be thankful for come Thanksgiving.

Jennifer M. Latzke can be reached by phone at 620-227-1807, or by e-mail at jlatzke@hpj.com.

Date: 11/22/06

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