Everything’s Better with Rainwater

“Everything is better when you get rainwater,” says cotton producer Kay White. But for the last two years, rainfall has been sparse on her Dawson County, Texas, farms. In 2020, White never received an inch of rainfall at one time. In fact, she only acquired 6 inches for the year. “There was no lake water or tank water anywhere in the last two years until the last two weeks,” White says, who’s received 5.5 inches of rain, “pretty consistently” since mid-May on her farms. But it’s been a challenging year. “The weather’s given us rain in spots and too much in others and not any in other places. We started out so dry and now have moisture to plant but the wind and the heat are keeping the crops from utilizing the moisture.” For 58 years, White has been farming irrigated and dryland cotton on the sandy soils of Key, Texas. Drought in her region is nothing new but she says this year is by far the hardest. “It’s probably dryer this year than it was in 2010,” she says. “2010 was really dry. We started out to make a good crop and it just didn’t rain. And we tried to run pivots and water and you couldn’t keep it wet—kind of like this year -- the wind blew, and it was dry, and it didn’t turn out good.” White rotates her cotton ground with wheat. Due to the drought, she’s cutting her irrigated acres in half this year, “unless the weather changes immensely. “I’m only going to call one circle irrigated and the other dryland. We’ve gotten these good rains, but we have nothing in the profile, so if we don’t get rain in June, July and August, we don’t have enough water to irrigate.” White will concentrate inputs such as fertilizer and water on her irrigated acres, while her dryland acres will be a ‘wait and see.’ “Now, if we get rain and can get it up, and in two weeks we get another good rain, then I’ll probably fertilize and water this dryland and see what happens with it,” she says. In her nearly 60 years of farming, White says she’s never had a year where she’s making decisions day-by-day. “We’re so dry, you can’t plan and then you get these spotted rains and you can’t finish the field you were on and you have to go somewhere else. It’s been very challenging, mostly due to the wind.”