Hurricane Season Hurts State’s Cotton Crop

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)- As Hurricane season slowly crawls by, the state’s cotton crop is taking a hit.

The conditions caused by this year’s hurricanes have led to a slow maturation of the states former cash crop.

An excess of rain isn’t good for the crops growth, but it also interrupted planting cycles, making farmers plant later than normally.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that as of September 10th, just under half of all the cotton in the state had open bolls.

Thankfully for farmers the crop was already behind schedule and will endure less damage than if the crop were currently being harvested.

Darrin Dodds, cotton specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said “being late to a degree helped the crop because rain did not string out open cotton, but given that we are running out of heat, we may have been better off with an earlier crop that had been defoliated and was standing up when the rain came.”