Crop Report

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Low prices and below-average landings are making a poor season for shrimpers, but consumers are getting a great deal on high-quality Gulf shrimp.

Dave Burrage, professor of marine resources with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said Mississippi’s shrimp season opened late and in two phases. Normally the season opens in early June, and part did open June 7, but the rest did not open until June 25.

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Mississippi’s 2.1 million acres in forage production have struggled from one extreme to the other, and farmers are hoping for a little help from Mother Nature to produce an adequate 2009 crop.

Rocky Lemus, forage specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said pastures and hay fields are just passing the midway point in the growing season.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Mississippi’s 2009 cotton is shaping up to be more a story of how the mighty have fallen than another chapter in the reign of King Cotton.

A poor outlook on market prices and continued high input costs led many producers to move away from cotton, and wet weather during the April and May planting window kept even more acres out of cotton production. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates Mississippi has 270,000 acres of cotton in 2009, the lowest on record. For comparison, Mississippi had 1.2 million acres of cotton in 2006.

By Patti Drapala
MSU Ag Communications

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Fickle weather may have altered the production schedule for watermelons this year, but Mississippi growers will have plenty of the popular red fruit available for summertime eating.

“Growers started pulling melons last week and will be in full swing as the marketing season begins,” said George County agent Mike Steede of the Mississippi State University Extension Service. “The melons look good and have filled out well.”

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Mississippi’s fruit growers are harvesting about twice as many blueberries as they did last year, thanks largely to the lack of significant spring freezes.

John Braswell, Mississippi State University horticulture specialist at the Coastal Research and Extension Center in Biloxi, said growers in south Mississippi have just passed the peak of the 2009 harvest season.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Wheat growers in Mississippi watched what was a very good crop in early spring turn into a major disappointment by harvest.

About 75 percent of the state’s 230,000 wheat acres were harvested by mid-June. Some of the remaining acres will never be harvested, as they are flooded by Yazoo River backwater.

Erick Larson, grain crops agronomist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said the crop was doing well through February until heavy rains started in mid-March and continued through April and May.

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Rain delays and changes in planting decisions are forcing a later than ideal start for Mississippi’s soybeans.

As planting window dates have been closing for other crops, growers are switching some fields to soybeans before time runs out for them as well.

By Patti Drapala
MSU Ag Communications

MISSISSIPPI STATE – An unusually wet May is causing some farmers to plant rice late, but the crop still has time to develop into a good one for the Delta.

Farmers could see decent prices, too, if several market factors play out by the time harvest occurs. They expect to complete planting by early June if rains relent and fields dry out. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Mississippi’s rice crop will total 240,000 acres when farmers are through.

By Patti Drapala
MSU Ag Communications

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Mississippi farmers finished planting their estimated 630,000 acres of corn on time, but the continuing effects of rain, standing water and cool soil temperatures have slowed the crop’s development in many areas of the state.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Heavy rains across the state brought planting and field work to a grinding halt since the first of May, causing some crops to grow rapidly and compete with weeds for needed nutrients.

The state had fairly uniform accumulations and an average of just over 7 inches of rain for the week ending May 10. The Gulf Coast had the least rain, with Biloxi getting less than 1 inch, while Belzoni in the lower Delta recorded the week’s high at 13.56 inches.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – It took only about 10 days to plant 40 percent of the state’s cotton crop this year, but farmers are only planting about a fourth of what they planted just three years ago.

“Forty percent of a 300,000-acre crop is quicker to plant than 40 percent of a 1.2 million-acre crop,” said Darrin Dodds, cotton specialist with Mississippi State University’s Extension Service.

Soil conditions were ideal, and producers worked quickly before rains rolled across the state the first weekend of May.

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Health officials assure consumers that pork is safe to eat and no victims in the current flu outbreak had contact with hogs, but neither fact has protected market prices or import restrictions on Mexican and U.S. pork products.

Even if health organizations succeed in changing the name, much of the world always will consider the H1N1 virus to be “swine flu.”

By Patti Drapala
MSU Ag Communications

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Mississippi producers can finish planting a potentially good corn crop in the next month if Mother Nature will spot them good weather.

Frequent rains in some areas of the state in the last two months have saturated soil, keeping fields too wet to plant. Cold temperatures in other areas have not allowed soil to stay warm enough to germinate seeds and to encourage growth in emerged seedlings.

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Dairy farmers have seen demand for their product sour at a time when it has never cost more to produce milk, and many are selling cows to cut costs.

John Anderson, agricultural economist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said milk prices per hundredweight were $13.23 in March and have been $14.66 in April. Farmers got $21.78 per hundredweight for fluid milk a year ago.

By Patti Drapala
MSU Ag Communications

MISSISSIPPI STATE – Many south Mississippi farmers have rotated peanuts with corn, soybeans and other crops to get through tough times, and word is spreading that this strategy can work for their counterparts in the northeast part of the state.

Peanuts make a good rotational crop because they are drought-tolerant, require less labor than other alternatives and have good loan assistance support. The marketing assistance loan for peanuts is $355 per ton, which in the minds of many farmers, beats “50-cent cotton.”

MISSISSIPPI STATE – High market prices and low input costs continue to make soybeans an attractive crop that will gain acres in 2009, but apparently not as many as originally predicted.

John Anderson, agricultural economist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said market watchers have been eager to see soybean acreage predictions. He said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Prospective Plantings Report released March 31 was greeted “with a lot of anticipation in the marketplace.”

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Mississippi's wheat is emerging from the winter with the same potential as last year’s record yield, but many opportunities remain for Mother Nature to spoil the final outcome.

Although the weather at planting time was favorable, the profit potential for wheat was not. The result was a wheat acreage decline of about 50 percent from last year, when growers averaged 62 bushels per acre on 485,000 acres.

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- State producers are harvesting the last of a large and generally good soybean crop after a scare from late summer rains that threatened to ruin most of the crop.

Trey Koger, soybean specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said about 95 percent of the state's soybeans were harvested by the end of October. The only beans remaining in the field were late-planted soybeans in the northern part of the state and along the river where spring floodwaters delayed planting.

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Cotton farmers are trying just to put the season behind them after a year of struggling with the crop once called “king” in Mississippi.

Darrin Dodds, cotton specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said much of the state's crop looked good until early August, when tropical weather brought untimely rains to areas of the state.

By Patti Drapala
MSU Ag Communications

MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Pumpkins do not grab the headlines as a significant crop, but they fill a niche for many Mississippi farmers who need to supplement cash flow.

“It's best to spread your effort out with several different enterprises because your farm is a business, after all,” said pumpkin producer Clay Meeks of Tippah County, who also grows soybeans and strawberries, and raises cattle. “It helps to have money coming in at different times of the year.”