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Annual Cotton Product Update for Lowcountry Growers
| Name | Tommy Walker | | Situation | Cotton growers are inundated with information from numerous sources, including magazine articles, direct mailings, personal calls from salesmen, industry meetings, statewide meetings, etc. Varieties, technologies, products and management strategies available change rapidly, and growers do not have time to develop a comfort level with one before it changes. | | Response | One of the most significant challenges facing Extension in production agriculture is to help growers organize and sort through the information they need to use to make management decisions, in this case information
regarding new varieties (which means technology, too), new bug management strategies and new products such as Avicta. Each winter since 1998 Clemson Extension has hosted a cotton meeting for the Lowcountry area and featured various guest speakers.
Prior to 2006, these meetings have been supper meetings that lasted 3
hours. In 2006 our growers asked that we consider 2 separate lunch
meetings to cover new technologies in one meeting and variety selection in a second meeting. We did so and 96 growers and agribusiness people attended. For 2007, our growers asked that we conduct only 1 meeting and shorten it to 1.5 hrs. They further asked that we address 3 specific topics: 1-variety performance and selection, 2-bug management and 3- seed treatments such as Avicta Complete Pack. Edisto REC Specialists asked that we make this a regional meeting and try to attract more growers from neighboring counties.
Our 2007 Cotton Production Meeting was moved to The County Line Restaurant between Hampton and Ehrhardt. This location is more central to growers from Allendale, Bamberg and Colleton Counties. Speakers included Dr. Mike Jones, SC Cotton Specialist on variety performance and selection; Dr. Jeremy Greene, Cotton Entomologist on bug management; and Dr. John Mueller, Plant Pathologist on Temik vs. the seed treatment Avicta. 70 growers and agribusiness people attended the meeting. | | Impact | I interviewed 10 growers and agribusiness people who attended this meeting and all thought useful information was presented. One consistent question is why our OVT data does not always reflect local variety performance, specifically why our OVT data shows several varieties as being poor performers when they do well in Hampton County. |
Last update6/26/2007
This website is maintained by Lisa Terry.
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