
With farmers facing another challenging crop year in 2025, risk management will remain critical for success — and that starts with using the right products.
Guy Collins, cotton specialist at North Carolina State University Extension, encourages farmers to make sure the products they decide to use are supported by replicated research.
In a panel discussion of Extension specialists at the North Carolina Commodity Conference on Jan. 10 at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in Durham, Collins noted that new products are marketed to farmers every year. But not all products build yield.
Collins said these new products may cost only $3 to $5 per acre, and in good years, that’s not a big expense. But in a tough year with high costs, that extra expense can make or break profit potential.
Panel members
Joining Collins on the panel on planning for the 2025 crop year were:
Charlie Cahoon, weed specialist at NC State Extension
Anders Huseth, entomologist at NC State Extension
Cory Heaton, wildlife specialist at Clemson University Extension
Jeff Chander, moderator and research coordinator with the North Carolina Soybean Producers Association
Managing thrips in cotton
Huseth provided guidance for thrips management using the new ThryvOn technology, which is now commercially available.
ThryvOn is a biotechnology trait that has built-in protection against tarnished plant bugs and thrips species. Huseth said the technology is effective in thrips suppression in cotton, but plant bugs will still need to be managed, and insecticides will need to be applied if plant bugs arise.
“Our recommendations for thrips in ThryvOn cotton is not to spray for that insect pest. We do have sporadic populations of tarnished plant bugs throughout the state, specifically in the northeast,” Huseth said. “Our recommendation for ThryvOn cotton is to scout. You’re likely going to have to manage those tarnished plant bug populations under intensive pressure with additional foliar insecticides.
“It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s giving us an edge on sustainability as far as reducing the number of sprays that we are allocating to cotton.”
Loss of dicamba
Cahoon offered pointers for farmers facing a year without the use of dicamba over the top for weed control — unless there is a “Hail Mary late-second pass” and the technology is approved for over the top application by regulators. He said farmers who have used dicamba in the past must change their management strategies to control weeds without it.
“Folks need to be ready for that in terms of the varieties that they are planting, how they are going to manage weeds,” Cahoon said. “If they are going to continue to stick with the Xtend platform, Liberty is probably going to be the bulk of it in the cotton acres. You have a few other options in the soybean crop.”
Cahoon urges a strong preemergence program. “We are going to have to have a lot of residuals up front, probably more so than you’ve done in the past, multiple modes of action. And then when we come back across the top, we’re going to need another opportunity to get some residuals out to keep ahead of the weed pressure,” he said.
Turning to fertility in cotton, Collins urged farmers not to apply more nitrogen than the crop needs.
“There are a number of growers that are using 120 to 130 or even more units of nitrogen. If you really play close attention to where we are really hitting those home run yields, four- and five-bale yields, on occasion, we’re really only using 80 or 90 units,” he said. “I’m not saying there aren’t situations where we don’t need to use 120 units.
“Let’s say we have a real wet June, and we need to make up for some losses, that would be one scenario. We just don’t need to do that across-the-board thinking it’s going to pay.”
Collins also provided guidance on when to defoliate cotton to develop a white bloom into a harvestable boll. He said NC State research shows defoliating in mid-October is the best time to develop a harvestable boll. By mid-October, the cotton crop typically does not accumulate many meaningful heat units, but mid-October is usually two weeks or so ahead of the first frost in North Carolina.
“You are far less likely to make that a harvestable boll if you push it all the way to a first frost, which goes against conventional thinking,” Collins said. “We did that again this past year in a year where we had a noticeably cooler fall.
“We’ve been comparing heat units from mid-August to the first frost. It was way cooler in 2024 than it has been for several years, and the same thing happened. When we defoliate from what I’m going to call on time — which is mid-October but way before freeze in most years — we we’re far more likely to open those bolls and harvest them than we were by pushing them all the way to a first frost.”
Head count for deer
To further help with crop yields, Heaton encouraged farmers to use the winter months to conduct deer density estimates on their farms.
“If you haven’t done one recently to know what those deer densities are around those locations you’re farming, you have a few more weeks. I’d encourage you to do that. It’s a lot easier to battle something when you actually know what you’re battling,” Heaton said.
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