Talkin' Cotton Podcast
Welcome to the UGA Cotton Team's Talkin' Cotton Podcast. This is a podcast for cotton growers, county agents, industry partners and anyone else interested in learning about science-backed cotton production and pest management. Our goal is to educate you with the most up-to-date data and information all season long. Talkin' Cotton will feature guests, such as, extension specialists, research faculty, graduate students, extension agents, industry allies and many others! Let's get into the why's of puttin' on, throwin' off and cuttin' out.
Talkin' Cotton Podcast
Irrigation, Planting, And Precision Ag Wins For 2026 Cotton
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Stop watering cotton that’s ready to pick. We dive straight into the decisions that protect margins in 2026: getting pivots uniform, setting planters for true depth, dialing fertility with grid sampling, and timing irrigation to the crop’s changing demand. With Dr. Wes Porter from the University of Georgia, we compare what the data promises with what real systems can deliver, turning research into a framework you can actually use.
First, we tackle pivot uniformity—the cheapest, most reliable ROI in irrigation. From clogged nozzles and cracked regulators after freeze events to backwards orifices that cause yield‑robbing bands, we outline why preseason testing matters and how a $2,500 to $5,000 re‑nozzling can pay back quickly. We connect aerial images and yield maps to water distribution so waste is visible, fixable, and profitable to correct.
Then we shift to precision fertility and planting. Stop trying to homogenize fields by pouring inputs into chronically weak zones. Use 2.5‑acre grid sampling to align nutrients with potential, and protect returns by reducing seed and fertility where yield never responds. On the planter, prioritize real seed‑to‑soil contact: a true one‑inch placement in hot, dry windows, lighter downforce for a small seed, and appropriate speed or high‑speed delivery when you push past 6 to 7 mph. We also unpack years of hill drop data: it boosts emergence in tough conditions but rarely adds yield unless stands are consistently poor—so deploy it tactically on crust‑prone ground.
The payoff comes with water timing. We explore stage‑based irrigation thresholds that let cotton run a little drier early, tighten through peak bloom, and relax late—always within the limits of your system’s capacity. And we address the bottom‑line finding growers ask about most: multiple years show no yield difference between terminating irrigation at cutout versus watering to 10 percent open or beyond, as long as the profile is full at termination. That’s real savings—often $10 to $40+ per acre—without sacrificing lint, and less risk of boll rot in wet finishes.
Want to turn wasted inches into margin? Listen now, take notes to tailor the framework to your fields, and send us your biggest win or sticking point. If this helped, subscribe, share with a neighbor, and leave a review so more growers can put money back in the bank.
Purpose And 2026 Context
SPEAKER_01Bringing you all things cotton production and pest management. This is the Talkin' Cotton Podcast with the University of Georgia cotton team. Let's get into the whys of putting on, throwing off, and cutting out. Okay. So this is another update, county meeting update for 2026. Again, this is this is just sharing information, right? We uh know that not every cotton team member is gonna go to every cotton meeting, and then you as as growers, consultants, or industry may not be able to make it to uh the meeting nearest you. And so we want to make sure that everybody has the information they need going into the crop season of 2026. Uh, but we do still encourage if you're able to go to the meetings, come on. Uh, we thoroughly enjoy, it's not that we, you know, love leaving our house at 5 30, 6 o'clock every morning and you know, all this good stuff, spending all this time on the road away from our houses. What we enjoy is coming and seeing you guys, visiting with you all, fellowshipping with you all. And you know, it's not that we love just showing a bunch of PowerPoint slides either. We we really enjoy visiting with everybody, and uh that's that's the reason to do these meetings, you know. Uh so anyways, that was kind of long-winded, but um today for our 2026 update, we have uh Dr. Wes Porter, who's doing all things extension, precision ag and irrigation. Dr. Porter, you doing good?
SPEAKER_02Doing good, doing good.
SPEAKER_01Uh you know, and just a just a reminder before we get too into it, we're recording this before the holidays in 2025. So um some things may change by the time Dr. Porter gets all of his talks put together, right? And so uh, you know, that's another reason to come to the meeting, but still just trying to get this knocked out so that we can release these periodically throughout uh 2020, the spring of 2026. So um, Wes, kind of what's on your mind going into 2026 with respect to cotton?
Input Management Mindset
Soil Sampling And Fertility Strategy
SPEAKER_02Yeah, when we look at our financial situation and we start looking at where we're at and what we need to do. One of my um the biggest things I want to look at from let's just say the engineering side in general is input management, right? And and that goes hand in hand with agronomic management when we go into it. But most of you that have listened, heard, interacted with me know that a lot of my program focuses on how do we use our technologies, either existing, new, even old technologies. I don't care and how do we optimize those to maximize our input management. So I my program I always like to structure. When I sit down with somebody and we talk precision ag in general, and I think what's nice about my background and my training and where I've come from and been through is I've been an ag engineer. I've I've worked on everything from pretty much soil sampling all the way through harvest. And so I structure my program in the way we talk about it that way. We obviously don't have time to go that deep into everything here today, but I think what we want to focus on are a few things, and maybe I'll do it in logical order and then we'll come back around. So hopefully, you know, at this time by the time you've listened to this, you should have already pulled your soil samples, got your recommendations, determined what fertilizer you're putting out.
SPEAKER_01Hey, real hey, you skip something already, right out the gate. The winter time is a great time to make sure that your pivot is putting out the water uniformly and that it needs to be putting out.
Pivot Uniformity And Re‑Nozzling ROI
SPEAKER_02Well, I didn't skip it yet, because you know you're supposed to pull your soil samples in like the fall. Yeah. So then we get to that, right? But your your good point.
SPEAKER_01Well, you were about here's what you were doing, and I can see it.
SPEAKER_02You were getting to fertilizer and planting.
SPEAKER_01But hey, we got me back on track. We have the water team at UGA and they would love to come do a uniformity test for you sometime in the spring.
SPEAKER_02Look, let's talk about that for a minute. One of our, in my opinion, one of our lowest hanging fruits, and I talked to some growers about it the other day, and I've tried to keep up with cost. I I was underestimating a little bit on cost, maybe I was throwing in the cost share amounts or smaller pivots, but I think we're somewhere between lower, smaller size,$2,500 up to about five or so thousand dollars to re-nozzle a pivot. You take that cost for what it's worth. If I'm investing$2,500 to$5,000, you know, I want some return on it. And we're going to come back around to cost return on irrigation management, but I want to talk about you because Kent brought it up. Let's talk about your um uniformity of that system right now. One thing we're working on, we don't have data on it yet, but I I've tasked some of the water team with taking these uniformity tests that they're running and then applying data to those that where we've over-irrigated, under-irrigated, that percentage acres, and what we're losing in that. And I can guarantee you that that re-nozzle will almost pay for itself every year.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, when we ride around and we look at pivots um running, um, hopefully none right now, we see leaks, stopped-up nozzles, leaky boots, nozzles up on guides. The list can go on and on and on. The other things that we don't see visibly with our eye, and I um actually had a couple guys tell me this the other day. If you get up in the air, with a plane, drone, whatever, dude, Google Earth. Google Earth, you see that banding really quickly. And usually banding is one of a couple things. The one that sucks the worst that'll really make you mad is uh, and this, and a guy told me the other day at a meeting, I was like, this happened to them. The um orfices were installed backwards. So, right, we've got our orfices are installed so that we have lower flow rate at the center pivot point and higher flow rate as we move out because the way the system walks and speed and coverage area and all that. Sometimes during installation, the tower from here to here, or between these two towers and these two towers, those packages get flipped. And that means we're under applying it one and over applying it another, and that's gonna show up very quickly. And that's a yeah, really bad time to find that is a good if you find it on Google Earth, it's it sucks, right? If you find it yield map, it sucks even worse.
Diagnosing Banding And Data Sharing
SPEAKER_01And so that's what I was gonna ask is like, has the has the water team thought about using yield maps and like looking at you know where where it's correct, like areas of the field where it's correctly applied versus you know the these bands where it's under applying or over applying or whatever, and maybe maybe potential net returns on a uniformity test.
SPEAKER_02That's kind of what I'm getting them to do a little bit with my data. It's not so mine would be like extrapolate, right? Because I've got all the over-under-target applied data that we can hypothetically apply to that particular field. But to your point, if growers, I I'm gonna throw this pitch out there. If you listen to this and you ask the guys to come run a uniformity test on your pivot, if you've got yield data for that field, don't mind sharing it with us. Any crop. Any crop.
SPEAKER_01I mean, corn, like it'd be great to have it on corn because I feel like that's where you're really gonna see it. But I mean, you know, if you have a yield, corn beans or cotton and they're out there doing pivot uniformity, give them the yield map, and then next time you plant corn, they're shared again. Yep, we'll anomalize it, I promise you.
SPEAKER_02We won't let you, you know, we're never gonna share that data to where somebody else needs your file something. Yeah, that's right. But we'll um we'll anomalize that data so that we make sure you get what you need and uh or that so that we can use it and nobody will know that it's your field. But that's that's powerful data at that point. That really tells us what the loss or the hits were for whether it's uh underwater, overwater, whatever, but off-target water. So, yes, spend time between now and early March getting those pivots ready. Um, I would say, you know, you're supposed to do a winter prep. We're past that. We've done had two freezes. Yeah, two different freeze events, not two days. We had two days um in December with freeze events. We've had two different freeze events that if you didn't prep that system, which will bring me to make the comment getting your system ready. If you didn't prep it and there was water sitting in it, you've probably got crack pressure pressure regulators or leaks somewhere from that water freezing inside of them. So they'll crack very quick and um uh leave you with a problem. So yes, get your pivot ready first.
SPEAKER_01And the last thing you want to do is walk out there to crank it up and then you find out you have a problem.
SPEAKER_02Yep. You know, well that's no fun. Usually we're not gonna start that system to apply water until our crop's been in the ground.
SPEAKER_01Or plant it, right? Yeah. If you plant it and need moisture, right? That's it.
SPEAKER_02Plant either planting and it's been in the ground.
Preseason Prep And Freeze Damage Checks
SPEAKER_01You get done spraying your pre-herbicides or whatever, and then you go try to start to pivot and there's a leak.
SPEAKER_02There's a leak or something's not working, it's a problem. It's a major problem. And it's also hard for us to do uniformities. We've been asked to do it. Hard to do uniformities when there's like a standing crop in the field. Keep that in mind. It's really hard to put the buckets out there and get a true gauge on it. And then you're behind the curve. Then you're trying to correct a problem when you're in the middle of production season and it's not the priority. To me, it's not the priority at that point, it's everything else is managing the crop, which is yeah. So pivot uniformities first. Um, as Camp said, we're getting into fertility. I'm not gonna go deep into that. If you're variable rating or not, that's depending on what soil sampling strategy you're using. We can talk about that deeper. I could talk about it all day, but um I I would feel at a minimum it would be nice if you're looking at some sort of grid sampling. Um, again, we could get on a tangent, all that all day. We're gonna leave it at that. Doing some precision soil sampling out there would be great.
SPEAKER_01Hey, the production guy says two and a half acres.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm good with that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I know there's a lot of tighter, it gets more expensive. You go bigger, then you're not getting a accurate representation.
Why Uniformity Tests Must Come Early
SPEAKER_02You know, you hear different values in what people do. You know, if you pick up new ground, you want to go on the smaller end, yeah, and then you hear guys that have been sampling for a few years that will go to a coarser resolution for a few years to save a lot of money. And then they may flip back to a tighter one. And then you got to keep in mind if you go too small, your equipment widths are are going to be wider than your transition and stuff like that. Yeah. So there's that fine line in there. But I'd just say some sort of strategy there will help you address those needs. And I think I want to I do want to make this comment about fertility management. I feel like there's a misconception out there, and it comes, I don't know where it comes from, but it comes from being naive, I think, in coming through and being educated about precision ag and hopefully this mindset is slowly changing over time. But I think in some of the earlier days and younger students and people coming out there think that, okay, well, I got this spot that don't yield as good. Let's just put more fertility to it. That's not what we're looking at doing. All right, right. We're using that and you want to look at your knowledge of the field, your yield history and stuff to say, all right, if I've got this area in the field that's lower yielding, but it's always lower yielding, maybe you just need to cut back in that area. Yeah. Maybe it's a seeding rate and a fertility cutback, or maybe it, you know, whatever. It's your decision of working in your farm.
Precision Fertility Without Chasing Poor Zones
SPEAKER_01But that's interesting because I think in the early days of precision ag, it was like, all right, we're gonna homogenize the whole field. Yep. And it's all gonna be the same and it's all gonna yield the same and it's gonna be awesome. But really, I think what it's kind of evolved into or should evolve into for people who aren't thinking about it is making the most of your inputs so you're not over-applying or underapplying, right, in different spots. So let's say you have sorry dirt, right? That you're over applying because you think that that's gonna help your yield, but historically you've got the data and the trends don't prove that, right? Or if you're under applying on your better spots to try to overcome that sorry spot, right? And so you want to put the inputs where where you maximize that return. And so directing your inputs where on your good ground you're giving it what it needs, and on the sorry ground, you're not putting too much in it.
SPEAKER_02Well, then, you know, this is a place that we can turn around and make some money back first, I think, really easily on doing that. Because I if we're putting those inputs and we're not utilizing them, yeah, we're just wasting money. That's right. So I say that's that's think about that. Next, let's move into planting. Uh planting, we've done tons and tons of research on planter performance. Um, we could talk about that all day, but you need to make my biggest thing with that is make sure you're getting the seed in the dirt because if you're not getting it covered, what I get worried about when we talk about planting it at half inch or three-quarters of an inch, we set our planner for that on dry dirt, and it's so shallow the opening disc or cutting a trench this close to a half inch or three-quarters, but that means when we get in the field, we're not, because of field conditions and variability in the field, we're not actually even getting that seed down that deep. Right. And so we got to make sure when you hear Camp talk about I like it at between you've made the comment, do you feel like an inch is on the deeper end sometimes in certain conditions? But that's the seed being put at an inch. Every time I have set, and when I set my trials up and y'all and you see my data, when I say a half inch, that planner is set on a half inch. But what happens every time I do that is the seeds won't get in the ground.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
Planting Depth, Downforce, And Speed
SPEAKER_02So go back and make sure your seeds are getting at a half inch. I had that question the other night from somebody setting planner depth. What do we do? Set it first on a hard surface, then take it to the field, because the hard surface setting is going to be different than the field setting. So uh get it. I like to have my um my setting closer to an inch to make sure I'm getting my seed adequately covered, adequately down to seed to soil contact. Um, a lot of things I think we talk about here. Let's do high points on season. If we're in a um wetter season, we can go a little bit shallower. If we're in a hot, dry um May, early June planting, what I've seen, if that seed's really shallow and we don't have irrigation or good moisture, that seed's not gonna germ. It's basically sit there and bake. Yeah, you know, it'll it it might germ, but it's a big deal, but then it'll then the heat'll kill it. There you go, that's a better way to put it. Yeah, it's not gonna, um I should have said it's not gonna emerge and get up and make a plant. It's gonna get burned.
SPEAKER_01Because I mean some of our soil temperatures, soil surface temps will get over 120 degrees. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There was one year um It was 2019. Yeah, it was I Yeah, I guess it was 19 still. That I my cotton planted at an inch and a half without adequate moisture did better than my cotton planted a lot shallower. Right. I'm not gonna recommend planting cotton at an inch and a half, but what happened that year, the soil temperature was cooler and there was moisture still down there. My emergence was still at 50% on that, but my emergence at planting at a half inch was at like 15% because that seed all cooked.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_02So, you know, you got to really make decisions at that time. Down force plays a role in that. We don't want too much down force on cotton because it is a small seed. We're trying to go shallow. We want just enough down force that we are uh getting that seed to that depth. It's not the planter's not riding out of the ground, and that we've got uh we're closing the trench good. All right. Um, planting speed, you can push planting speed a little bit on cotton just like you can on corn. We can push it with standard planters up to like six, almost seven miles an hour without any degradation. Um, we've done some work on um advanced seed delivery. If you're gonna go faster than six and a half, seven miles an hour, you do need advanced delivery, whether that's the precision planting uh speed tube or the John Deere brush belt. You know, of course, some of you guys are using some of those already. We've tested hill drop versus singulated in those scenarios, and um, we're gonna do some hill drop testing with the exact eMERGE this coming year for spacing and stuff like that. We've never done that in the past. We do have some plates over there for it, so look for some of that data coming out.
SPEAKER_01Is it exact merge high speed?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02It is high speed. So I'm gonna be interested to see how it works with hill drop with it. You know, it's got that handoff. What it does, it uh as your seed comes around, it's got that brush belt moving, it grabs the seed and takes it down the brush belt. And so it'll be interesting to see how it works with two seeds coming in there.
SPEAKER_01It almost throws it. Yeah.
High‑Speed Delivery And Hill Drop Findings
SPEAKER_02Like it doesn't just drop it. It's at 110% of your um ground speed. So if you're traveling at um um, let's say five miles an hour, so whatever the 110% of five miles an hour is, it's moving that seed so that it has negative. Five and a half. Yeah, basically, yeah, there you go, five and a half. So it gives uh negative velocity when it hits the soil. Does that make sense? You want to cancel out your fork motion with it moving the seed so there's no roll. Yeah. So to your point, it is almost like shooting it into the ground. So um we didn't um, I would not recommend we did this, and it's not recommended by the company, but he'll drop seeds with uh precision planting's uh speed tube. We've tested that a couple different ways, and what happens is we are separating those heels. I actually have that data. We're gonna talk to our agents about them. I'll present that data at Beltwide this year and uh any cotton meetings I do or machinery meetings, I've got that data I'll share. But it separates those heels because um just to where it's at. If you're gonna plant with hill drop on precision system, use a gravity drop seed tube and don't go too fast. Yeah. I mean, it's that's the the key. But okay, let's go back to the emergence and yield from hill drop. I've done that in a bunch of different years from 2016 or 17 all the way up until this year in 25 in different scenarios, different planners. We've never saw a true yield benefit for hill drop in average conditions or optimal conditions. When we see that, and it's the same, you will get a little bit more emergence on average, you'll get about five to 10% more emergence for hill drop, that doesn't correlate to greater yield. When hill drop correlates to greater yields, if you have poor emerging scenarios in your field. So if we got fields that are really bad emergence on general, that's when we're going to see a benefit for um planting hill drop. So if it were me and I'm like, man, I got this one field that's prone to crusting or it's got a heavy clay or whatever it is. And we all see there's spots in the field like that. We can't spot change, but if I'm looking, I got a field that's 50%, those spots that doesn't come up. I'll put, I would put hill drop plates in it in that field, right? Yeah. And then I've got my good ground that I get good emergence on every year, maybe a little bit my lighter, quote unquote lighter soil type where I don't get crusting, I don't go to issues, then go back to singulated. Because to me, hill drop, we're putting out an extra seed that's competing with the plant beside it, but and there's no point to do that unless we just can't get that crop out of the ground.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that's where I would trade off those two in planting. What else I'm planting? That's probably a good uh recap of it. We can talk about irrigation management now. Um did a really interesting study this year that we're still uh to Camp's point earlier. We're I'm looking at the data, this good data that we got there. Um, two of our treatments were by far higher yielding. So I'm talking about cerebestas. Yeah, sure.
When Hill Drop Actually Pays
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um I've got that irrigation thresholds on like variant varying your irrigation threshold by the growth stage of the plant, right? And so it's I mean, we all know that peak water use, Wes's favorite words, are like the third to fifth week of bloom, peak bloom, right? But like we we recommend a static threshold on a sensor. We're talking about sensors, and so um, you know, it it is an interesting study to say, all right, well, we're gonna back that threshold off early in the season, pre-bloom, right? And then once it blooms, we'll we'll kind of go up a a notch on our threshold, and then whenever it's at its peak water use, we'll even move that threshold even further to where it's more aggressive. You're putting out more water when the cotton needs it, and then back it off at the end of the season, right? Yep. And so but this is only the first this is the first time.
SPEAKER_02First year we've done that on cotton. We've done a little bit of that work on peanuts for a few years and saw some really interesting things. And for the first year this past year, we did a four split on peanuts, and that's where we're sitting on cotton. I think we got four different timings in there on cotton early. Early season, as Camp just said, two different uh triggers in during bloom, and then a late season. So it can be a um it can be difficult to stay on top of that management a little bit. That's the reason we're doing the study, right? Which we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_01Well, and whenever you look at you look at all the thresholds and stuff like that, and and then you start looking at the amount of water applied in each different treatment and as it transitions and stuff, moving from a seventy kilopascal to forty takes a lot of water.
SPEAKER_02We got to catch up, is what we would call it, right?
SPEAKER_01So you're behind on the forty and you got to get Get there to start meeting 40, and then if you move from 40 to 20.
Stage‑Based Irrigation Thresholds
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so that's what that we see. Y'all saw some of that some of the data, and we got the yield data now. And it's to me, there's that fine line to what you just said. So if we, you know, there there is something to leaving crops a little bit drier early season, up until squaring, probably on cotton. And what that does, and I'm not saying it's really hard to document. It is. It's hard to document. It is. And we a lot of people have done work on it, but it's like if we over, we do know if we overwater them or they sit in a cool, saturated condition, they just seem they don't grow, right? Everybody says they just sat it, just sad. Well, that's kind of what's happening. So what we're saying we're doing is in some of the treatments, we're backing off on that water and letting those roots basically allocate energy somewhere else. And to me, I look at a plant, the more I've thought about this, it's an it's an energy sink, right? Where are we going to re you know, allocate resources? If it's sitting there and it doesn't have moisture close, it's gonna put some energy into putting roots deeper. But if we let it do too much of that, then we've basically taken too much energy away from above ground production. So it's like a fine line in there on where we want it to do that and not want it to do it. Either way, we um we've looked at that and then to camp's point, if we get too far behind, then it turns dry on us in June, which it does every year. Okay. Well, I can say just because I did a corn meeting two days ago, and I look at that's my favorite word to camp peak water use on corn is in June. I look at distribution of rainfall in June, and I can tell tell you right now off the top of my head, from 2020 through 2025, our Junes have been dry five of those six years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
June Dry Risk And Catch‑Up Limits
Frameworks Over Silver Bullets
Irrigation Termination Evidence
SPEAKER_02So if I'm a gambling man, it's gonna be dry during June. Yeah. All right. And and I don't, I'm not looking at long long-term weather patterns or modeling or anything. I'm looking at what West Porter's observed over the past six years in the month of June and has been dry, uh, five of the six of them. So if I get behind in June on that crop, the camps point is hard to catch back up, or it takes a lot of water to pull it back into an adequate scenario. So again, there's a fine line, especially you have to um how do I want to state this the right way for guys listening? I talked to a Mid-South colleague of mine last week. I was in Mississippi for the road crop short course, and he and I were talking about management. And every time I present data, somebody's like, Yeah, that's cool stuff, but, but, but. And I'm like, okay, so I think I got to do a better job saying, all right, I've given you a um a framework to look at. Right. All right, so here's my framework on on how you can do this. Now, what does your situation, your house, your ideas, your plan look like? Take my framework and where does it apply to where you're at, right? I can't, in my research, I can't sit, I cannot simulate or research every scenario that's out there. But what I can tell you is if you do this, this is going to happen. So if I kept my crop dry too long, I had to irrigate, for example, I think we showed that three times in a row to bring it back to optimal. We can do that at the research station. That would have been, what is that, two and a quarter inches within three days? And and none of our own farm irrigation systems can do that. All right, right. You know what your irrigation system can do, so don't let it get to that point. Know that we can back off a little bit, but don't let yourself get to that point. So when I say use my framework and say, all right, well, Wesley, we could do this, but I just don't have the capacity. All right, you know you don't have the capacity, so get ahead of yourself when you're approaching bloom. All right, I'm in I'm in square and I'm starting to see some of those white candles show up out there, then start pre-watering to catch back up. Don't wait. What we did is waited until 50% of the field reached first bloom. Yeah. And then we played catch up. Yeah. And we can do that. And you know, we're, we're, we can draw those hard lines. I want y'all to look at my data and say, all right, here's what I can take his data, learn something from, and apply to my situation. I think the minute that we start looking at it with that framework, and maybe most of you guys do, but I can tell with some of the questions I get that you're hoping I can give you the magic answer. And I'm I can I'll be here my whole career and won't be able to give you the magic answer, right? But hopefully the data I have gives you an idea in the framework to move you to where you need to be. So um on that study, we've uh we've looked at a lot of different things. I'm interested. I'm excited to share that results. Sarah Beth's going to present it at uh Beltwide. I think she's excited, she's nervous because it'll be her first professional presentation, but she's also excited to do it. Um I'm excited to see some of the feedback. I actually read the other day and I shared this with her in might have been Cotton Companion, the newsletter that comes out. I don't know if it comes out or Cotton News. Somebody in Texas actually was doing a similar study and we didn't. Oh, really? And theirs, their treatments are very similar to ours, and they get found very similar results. Oh, that's interesting. So they're more in deficient irrigation, though, right? Yeah. But it was cool to see. She went and pulled the, she's a good grad student. And the minute I sent it to her, she went and pulled the paper, not just the news article, and comes back to my office within an hour. She done read the paper and highlighted stuff and said, Look at this. She was excited. So it was great. That's awesome. Yeah, I was like, okay. I said, This is really good, you know. And she was, she said, gives me another source, another thing to think about. It also backs up some of my data. And so to tell you guys, we're, I think nationally, it looks like this is getting to be a topic just talked about a little bit and something that we will look at moving forward to help you out with it. So that's in season management. Um, the other thing I'd say about in-season management is over-irrigation can kill you, under-irrigation will kill you. So we got to figure out how to match them at the right times. Um, that's what we've talked about, and you'll get more of. And then I think another thing I want to talk about is end of season management. Um, and I gotta, I don't think Snyder's doing one of the podcasts, even because he probably won't go deep into it because he doesn't do the county meeting circuit. But years ago, we kept getting the questions on irrigation termination, irrigation termination, and I went to our uh cotton physiologist John Snyder and said, Hey, we need to do a study like this. And so he initiated a study. And John, because he uh is a physiologist, he does a lot of other things within that study that we just wouldn't have done. Um and so he had a lot of treatments, a lot of things going on. To me, I'm gonna have to I want to keep running similar termination studies, but I'm for just for my sake, so I can manage it. I'm gonna take it a little more simplistic. But what he learned out of uh, and I've got to get the data from uh Jason this year to see where it's at. Have you seen this year's data? Yeah. Okay, let's talk about that in a minute. Um let me hit the early data first. Let's come to that. So we're fine. And maybe it's gonna tell me opposite. But the early data that he did, we had he had a grad student um back in the early twenty twenties, and this data is published. Um what she found was that they had four irrigation termination time and started at cutout, open bowl, open bowl plus two weeks, open bowl plus four weeks. In both years, there was zero difference between yields in any of those treatments. And then when we moved to water use efficiency, the first year it was a wetter year, there was no difference in water use efficiency. And then the second year it was a drier year. Um, the the cutout treatment had the highest water use efficiency. All right, the first thing that you can glean from that data is wet or dry year, there was no difference in yield for stopping irrigation on that cotton at cutout versus all the way through open bowl plus four weeks. That tells me we have an opportunity to save money and or there's no yield difference. So we're not gaining yield. All right, so that's input savings. So I went in and looked at the addition, and y'all get this when you see my presentation. I think this is such impactful data. Additional irrigation required to carry us through to that, especially in that drier year. We addition, and I and I'll miss the numbers, but somewhere almost up to six, six additional inches from cutout to the open bowl plus four treatment is what was uh four-week treatment, is what was added to keep irrigating it that long. All right. So in my data, when I put economic numbers to that, I think that ranged from like$12 or$15 per acre on electrical pumping all the way up to$40 something dollars per acre. We wasted to not gain anything. All right. That was in that year. Last year, um, one of the Snyder students did the study and he cut it down just to two treatments um cutout, open bowl. And same, same story, cut out, um, yielded the same as open bowl, and they applied an inch and a half more. So it was a savings of$12, uh, electric and up to$18 or$20 for diesel pumping that we didn't need. We didn't gain yield, all we did was wasted money. All right. So it was kind of a wet year. It was kind of a wet year. So let's talk about the dry year. I've not seen the data. I need to get it from Jason.
SPEAKER_01So I hadn't seen it in depth, but um Snyder texted me after he had got done running it. And so um really what what Jason's study is looking at is I believe it's one variety, two termination timings, but he's also varying his PGR regimen to vary the cutout days. We we know that PGRs impact days to cut out, and if you don't put a PGR on cotton, you have uh roughly a week more to get to cutout compared to utilizing any PGR. Did that make sense?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So um so he's got all those treatments kind of laid in there, and uh that you know, kind of reiterating that in some in those three previous years, it kind of looked like we're wetter in the fall, which is normally whenever you're thinking about terminating irrigation. And so um the reason I'm kind of interested in Snyder keeps me in the loop on it is because one of my colleagues, um, Cross River, Dr. Steve Brown, he he gives me grief over it, right? Because he's like, There's no way, there's no way you can make such good cotton and terminate irrigation at cutout, okay? And I told him, we talked about it this summer, of course. He he's still in the loop with stuff, but he told me, he said, This is gonna be the year. Like, if you were ever gonna see a difference, this is gonna be it. And I was like, You're right. Because we had such a dry spell in in September, right? Yep.
SPEAKER_02I'm sitting edge in my seat. I gotta hear this.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so um, so I was the year. Yeah, it this was the year. If we were gonna see a yield difference with terminating it cut out versus 10% open, it was gonna happen this time. Snyder texted me. I just went back and looked. All of Jason's treatments, which this was a great cotton year. Yeah, all of Jason's treatments averaged right around four bell cotton, no difference in termination time.
Dry Year Test: Cutout Still Wins
SPEAKER_02Can I can I tell you something too? Okay. I haven't seen that data. Sarah Beth showed me her data that where we went um into the 70 kilopascal range during late bloom, uh-huh, which would be dry. Yeah, right. And it beat, she was scared to tell me because I had this method I developed like early in my career on just a standard weighted average, is we just use the set threshold. And I've set up these spreadsheets and all my students use them, and she was like, Um, well, your your your method didn't do that good. And I was like, What do you mean? I was like, that's what we want to learn. Like, you're not gonna hurt my feelings. What we just learned is the same thing that you just said is that we let it even during bloom, and I'm not telling you cut back water on bloom yet. No, no. That was this year, but it was really amazing to me that that that it was a two or three hundred pound difference when we dried out.
SPEAKER_01So But that was after the fifth week of bloom, surely. Yeah, and that's again, you're ending off water use, you're coming on, you're on that downhill slope. And so bumping from whatever it is, 40 or 20 to 70, you've still banked a lot of water. You've banked water moving. So you can use that, and then by the time you use it all, it it might be at the sixth or seventh week of bloom. That's it. You know, and so then it's six or seventh week of bloom for you water again uh to maintain that full profile. But so at the end of the day, in Snyder's data and Jason's project and stuff like that, you've got no difference in irrigation termination by terminate or no difference in yield by irrigation termination timing as long as you have a full profile when you terminate.
SPEAKER_02If you've goofed up, and you can get mad at me for saying that, and you're behind at cutout, you better catch up and then terminate. Yeah. We've got to do a good job at that point. But my if you've goofed up to that point, you probably lost yield because you know, when we get to cut out, we're moving out of bloom and we should have stayed on top of our water use at that point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
Overwatering, Boll Rot, And Economics
SPEAKER_02And um we um sorry, there's like y'all got me too excited, but there's a lot of a lot of thoughts coming in. I gotta organize them. Um, if we've done a good job managing up to that point, to me, it's as simple as that. I I think we've shown now with about three or four different years of diet, and I think even the diet of Sarah Best working on is starting to show that too. And we didn't terminate in her study until 10% open because that's our still our official recommendation. But she was worried moving into some weekends and moving into the end of the season, the water you she thought was high, high, high. And she was like, I don't think we're gonna catch up. I think this is gonna happen. What's going on? And all of a sudden she came in, she's like, it just quit using water. What do we mean? It was like over the weekend, it was like nothing changed. And I said, I told you it would get there. And it's amazing to watch that with your sensors because you can monitor it. And I have so many out there where monitor so many plots. It was like every plot all of a sudden at the same time was like, we're done. Yeah. And walked away. And it was like, that's to me, that's a good feeling to know with confidence. And we're building data sets, I feel like in Georgia, that are hopefully building confidence for our growers to say, we can stop here if we've managed adequately. Yeah. And you've got to say that, manage adequately. I think in a in our situation that we're in in cotton right now, it's not great situations from a multitude of different reasons. We've got to see where we can save where we're at. And it's absolutely ridiculous to walk in a cotton field that it needs to be defoliated, that the pivot's running.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'll say that right now. And we I get pictures, I get videos, I get stuff every year that you can see a cotton field that's 60% open, and camp says you need to spray it with defoliation and the pivot's running in it. We should have terminated that three weeks ago, four weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02John, when he gave me that data from the early study, 2021 and 22, he said that last treatment is ridiculous. Nobody irrigates it four weeks after open bowl. You guess what? Guess what? How many people irrigate it four weeks after open bowl? More than we would like to admit. So that's a lot of money. If you're pumping with diesel, the numbers I have from that year, it was$85 per acre.
Spend Less Water, Reallocate Smarter
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, and uh, you know, even thinking about the difference between cutout, which is a note above white flower three in Georgia and 10% open or first open bowl or one. Or a week and a half. Right. Maybe. I, you know, there there's not, and that was kind of that's my question, I guess, is what's the time difference between cutout and first open bowl? And really, just anecdotally, I think it's about a week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But one week means one more watering, right? If you make one more trip with the pivot, I mean, depending on how much you're applying, that's you know, another$15 or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_02Right now, we're economically saying um the last data looked on the enterprise budgets is nine dollars per acre inch for electric and twelve for diesel.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I mean you're talking$10,$11 if you got to make one more trip. And so if you save that trip, I mean, that's that's money in the bank.
SPEAKER_02That's you know we better put again, I don't know what cotton's gonna do. The 60 cent cotton, we better save everywhere we can. Yeah, no doubt. Frickin' bugs that are going hopefully.
SPEAKER_01Everybody's talked about Jassids.
SPEAKER_02Uh well, I didn't say their name. I didn't say their name. I'm not even gonna say their name. Maybe the maybe the wind will blow them away this winter. But um maybe, you know, we got another challenge, right? It's like as challenge and challenge comes on, we got to use what's what we have that's known and some of the things that we can do and make changes with. I would say that, you know, and and that's this is uh to me when I look at these data and I'm glad to hear what Snyder told you. I'm it excites me to know that we we have this data set that is potential to really help our guys. Yeah, you know, yeah, with complexity.
SPEAKER_01And I think you know, it all goes back to you know, the economic situation's bad. We've been in a bad economic situation for the last two or three years, and utilizing the technology that's available to us, the data that's available to us to make these decisions and redirect inputs where they're needed or potentially cut. Yeah. Right. And so it's like there there's plenty of opportunities here. And I mean, we're just building this knowledge base that's like, all right, well, maybe we've been doing this wrong.
Optimize Existing Tech, Not Shiny New
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, well, it's like to me, it's like it's an insurance. I'm I'm even scared in every year, just like, should we should we shut our treatments off of this? Should we do this? Should we push it back? I think we've we've built a lot of that.
SPEAKER_01It helps people sleep at night. It's really good. Well it does. It's an insurance policy.
SPEAKER_02It's a it's a confidence booster and a builder that you're like, okay, we're good. We got this, we're good. But now I'm seeing that it's probably the opposite. There was 2023 or two, twenty-two, twenty-three, when it was bull rot was so bad.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Every one of my treat irrigated treatments had lower yields than my rain-fed treatment. And farmers tell you that, and it's like, all right, well, what could we have done different then?
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02I didn't terminate early. Maybe I should have terminated earlier. Yeah. You know, actually in 22.
SPEAKER_01I had somebody tell me that the other day. They had their dry land do better than their irrigated this year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that happens. It happens. And it it sucks when it happens because we manage that dry land at a lower cost and manage that irrigated at a higher cost.
SPEAKER_01And you make more money on a dry land than you do the irrigator.
SPEAKER_02Yep. And I I used to get criticized when I was a younger specialist uh by older agents. They're like, um, the data that you just showed us basically said we need to quit irrigating cotton. I was like, well, I'm just sharing data with you. I'm not telling you to quit irrigating cotton. What I hope the message is, is that we have to well time our inputs, whether that's irrigation, whether that's anything. In this case, irrigation, if we don't well time it, the harsh reality is we would have been better to have not irrigated it. Yeah. You know, and I hate to, I'm too blunt sometimes when to say stuff like that. Just like Sarah told me the other day, it was my own fault, right? I had no response. We got we gotta reality check ourselves sometimes with that.
SPEAKER_01She used to spend a lot of time with somebody who likes saying that.
SPEAKER_02Philip. Whose fault is that? You know, and so it's a pretty it's a harsh reality that it happens to all of us out there and and that decision gets made and it's like crap, here we are. And there are some instances that there was nothing we could have done different to have fixed that. But if we made poor decisions throughout, um, then I think we look back and say, what could we have done differently and learn from it and move forward? So I I that's what it it that's what keeps me from sleeping at night. It's like how can we make a better decision here? How can I give these guys data that help them make a better decision?
SPEAKER_01Well, let's say save money and preserve yield or ma maximizing those inputs to where you you yield the most where you can and you're putting those inputs where they need to go. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. Is I mean, we we've got to find a way. There's only so much you can do and so much you can cut and do all this stuff. But again, if you redirect inputs, that's what we've got. And I mean, that this this uh irrigation stuff is saying, like, hey, that one more that may not be necessary. May not be necessary. As long as you've done a good job the entire season maintaining that that profile, then it may not be necessary to do that one more trip, and that's ten dollars. That's ten more. You know, that's a that's a trip across field with a sprayer or something, you know, that's it, right? Whatever it is. And so it's uh you can redirect to something that you need. Yep. Right. And so it's uh I don't know, it is exciting. Like you was talking about a second ago, you kind of get all fired up and jacked up. I can see you squirming around.
SPEAKER_02I know it got me my brain ran faster than I could think about it. I was like, there's so many things that like I'm sitting here, like, all right, Wes, when you get out here, don't forget to get with Snyder, make sure you have a slide to share with the agent for the agent training, and don't forget to do this so we can get this data out there more and more and more. And yeah, and and yeah, like you hear I'm like, and it's going again. I gotta stop it, you know, drink coffee before I walk in here and get kicked into hyperdrive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so I mean, it's you know, we're I think we're all looking at where to cut or what to do different to try to maximize net returns, but these are things that we're already doing. Yeah, right. I'm looking at some crazy off the wall stuff, and I mean, if we get more confident in that, I can share a little bit more about it. But you know, the the simple stuff that we're that we're already doing and just can modify, right?
SPEAKER_02I want to my take home message. We're probably getting close to wrapping up so you can get to the next one. My my take and we could talk about I was sitting here debating with Do we talk about some of our harvester stuff and some of that? And you know what? It's so far out till y'all get to that point. We'll cover it on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01You're already gone and take that up to the dealer, say do all my maintenance and my service.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Yeah, we'll get to that stuff when we come. We don't have to cover that today. But my I think my take-home message today is um make sure we use and what I want to help you guys do, and whether I cover it in this podcast, whether I cover it in the county meeting, or you just need to pull me aside and say, I want to talk about this technology. I get I do get a little frustrated and tired of people saying new technology, new technology, new technology. We're at the point that we have a lot of new technology. Let's do exactly what Camp just said and let's optimize the technology that we have sitting out there. And I'm poor at it. We're all poor at it. I mean, we could talk about Oh, I'm terrible at it. I mean, even I know I always use our phones for an example. I probably use 10 or 15% of the capability of the phone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, um, same way in our vehicles. Our vehicles have so many features right now that I don't even know how to maximize everything it's doing. I hadn't set them all up, right? Sarah's fancy new car, you use everything that's in that car. It's got so much.
SPEAKER_01Hey Sarah, can you speak in a microphone, please?
SPEAKER_02I didn't want I meant me to put it on point, but she's got the coolest like her car, like, will do whatever.
SPEAKER_01I saw a light switch in my truck the other day. I've had that truck for three years, and I was like, well, that would have been helpful. Yeah, see? And I it's like, dang.
SPEAKER_02There's a lot of, and that's my point with it, even vehicles now. So in our ag equipment, there are so many things going on on those control systems, field computers, electronics in it that we're probably not utilizing to the max potential. So, what I would like to help you guys do, like my challenge or my my offer is let's make sure we do that. Let's make sure that when we're going out to the field, we're set up for success right here.
SPEAKER_01We're optimizing the technology that we have. Yep. You know, versus oh, let's go get the latest and greatest that we don't really know how to use. You've already got all these tools on the farm. Let's optimize those to get the greatest benefit of it.
SPEAKER_02Yep. And as you trade in equipment, we know that a lot of times what I think I I do or don't like about where we're at right now, it depends on who you talk to, because it's getting harder and harder to stay on standardized equipment. But as you trade in and upgrade equipment, it's got features that you may not want, but they're now what used to be optional features is standard package. So they're there. You've done paid for them. Let's talk about how we can use them. All right. So that to me, let's take what I've talked about today and bring it back around to that. If you've made it this far on our podcast, I I want to make sure we help you you do that on the farm this year to make sure that we uh we optimize what we have.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's right. That's right. Well, man, that was good. I enjoyed that. So um, all right. So Wes is doing a handful of precision ag meetings and stuff like that. So, you know, be on the lookout. Your county agent has all the dates and stuff like that. If you want to hear more about what he's talked about today, and he's probably gonna cover some other stuff, you know, go to the meeting, visit with him, tell him, you know, talk to him about your irrigation management strategies, what's working for you, what's not, and then um, you know, how you've adapted what you've done based on what uh we're all working on and stuff like that. But um certainly appreciate the time, Wes. And as always, if you have any questions on this or anything else, just reach out to your county agent.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Thank y'all.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Cotton with the UGA Cotton Team. If you have any questions about anything we talked about today, or if there's anything you'd like for us to talk about in the future, please contact your local UGA County Extension agent. And as always, you can find us on all major podcast platforms. Be sure to like, share with your friends, and subscribe so you can stay up to date.
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