Articles

  • 1 week ago | farmprogress.com | Ron Smith

    The boll weevil crossed the Rio Grande into Texas cotton fields in 1892 to begin a relentless, largely unchecked march across the Cotton Belt, ultimately exacting more than $23 billion from U.S cotton producers, including yield losses and control costs. Rapid encroachmentThe  boll weevil spread rapidly, averaging from 40 to 160 miles a year, reaching Alabama in 1910, Missouri in 1913, and by 1922 had infested Southeast cotton fields into the Carolinas.

  • 1 week ago | farmprogress.com | Ron Smith

    Edward Herrera has been chasing the boll weevil across Texas cotton fields for almost 28 years — starting in Central Texas, then to Far West Texas, and now in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Herrera’s current objective is to push one of the most destructive invasive pests in U.S. agriculture history out of the country and to prevent it from reestablishing populations in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, the weevil’s last stand in the U.S. Cotton Belt.

  • 2 weeks ago | farmprogress.com | Ron Smith |Shelley E. Huguley

    For the last two years Southwest peanut farmers have either delayed planting or cranked up irrigation to water the crop up. This year, they waited for fields to dry out. Waiting on soil to dry out enough to plant is a better option, say Oklahoma and Texas Extension peanut specialists. “We’re just getting started,” said Maxwell Smith, Oklahoma State University Extension specialist, Altus. The planter is running on Brent Hendon's Welch, Texas, peanut fields.

  • 2 weeks ago | farmprogress.com | Ron Smith

    Resources are available to help producers combat feral hogs. Sam Craft, Texas A&M AgriLifeA pilot program in the last farm bill included projects in Texas and other states for intense feral hog removal with state and landowner participation. “Studies have shown that every dollar spent from the farm bill provides a $5 to $6 benefit to landowners,” said Bruce Leland, Assistant Director, Texas Wildlife Service, San Antonio.

  • 2 weeks ago | farmprogress.com | Ron Smith

    Jay Norman witnessed feral hog damage in cropland for the first time in 1984 on a farm in Dorchester, Texas. “It was 20 years after that before I had any damage on my Fannin County farm,” Norman says. Since 2004, hog damage has been an annual concern. “We have some damage every year; sometimes it’s just a partial field,” he said. “Last year we replanted 40 or 50 acres. We replanted 160 the year before and 600 the year before that. “Wild hogs are here all the time, just heavier sometimes than others.

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