Western cotton producers participating in the National Cotton Council's 2016 Producer Information Exchange (P.I.E.) program spent a week in Texas visiting farms and cotton-related facilities in both Lubbock in the Southern Plains and Corpus Christi, Texas, in the Coastal Bend.

The five-day event was supported by Bayer CropScience and hosted by NCC regional representatives Dwight Jackson of Corpus Christi and Susan Everett of Lubbock. NCC Member Service Representative Mike Brueggemann, of Madera, California, traveled east with producers from California and Arizona to participate in the tour.

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Each year the P.I.E. program provides U.S. cotton producers an opportunity to maximize production efficiency and improve yields and fiber quality by gaining new perspectives in such fundamental practices as land preparation, planting, fertilization, pest control, irrigation and harvesting by observing diverse farming practices and the unique ways in which their innovative peers have adopted new and existing technology in other regions across the country.

This year, Mid-South producers visited agricultural operations in North Carolina and South Carolina in mid July; Southeast producers traveled to Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee to see operations there in late July; Southwest producers toured California’s San Joaquin Valley  July 31-August 5; and Western producers made the Texas leg of the tour August 14-19.

Sponsored by Bayer CropScience LP through a grant to The Cotton Foundation, the P.I.E. is now in its 28th year. During that time, more than 1,100 U.S. cotton producers learned about innovative production practices in regions different than their own.

Photos by Logan Hawkes