GMO Cotton's not perfect.....WHAT??

For two years now, I have raved about the benefits of the GMO cottonseed that The Farmer I Kiss plants.  So why now would I say it's not perfect??  Well, that's because besides a beautiful newborn grandchild, nothing in the world is perfect.

This is a low lying lake area that Daniel was not able to plow after planting

It took me several tries to get permission from Daniel to show these photos.  Why?  Because farmers don't like their fields to look messy and this is pretty messy.  If you are not all that familiar with cotton fields, you may just think that this is a photo of cotton waiting to be harvested.  You would be wrong.  This part of the field has been harvested.  What you are seeing is called Volunteer Cotton.

Our varieties are storm resistant, but some locks still wind up on the ground

Throughout the growing season, locks of cotton can fall out of the burr to the ground.  Also, as we harvest in the fall, pieces of cotton fall to the ground.  Both of these situations result in cotton which contains cottonseed lying on the ground.  The next spring, those seed sprout and grow Volunteer Cotton in the blank spaces between the newly planted rows of cotton, essentially making those Volunteer Cotton plants "weeds."

The Volunteer Cotton plants usually sprout early in the season, and are more mature than the cotton in the rows. 

The smaller stalks are from the cotton planted in the rows.  The larger stalk is a Volunteer Cotton stalk.

The definition of a weed on a cotton farm is any plant that is growing and taking valuable nutrients and more valuable water away from the rows of planted cotton.  The rouge Volunteer Cotton plants must be controlled just like any other weed because they are not harvestable in the fall.  (Disclaimer:  There are ways to harvest cotton that is not in the rows, but that requires additional harvesting equipment, fuel or trips over the field which makes the process close to impossible.)

Notice the small amount of cotton that is left on the ground after the cotton stripper has passed.

So here's the part about GMO cottonseed being less than perfect.  The particular varieties of GMO cottonseed that we plant has the genetic trait from the pansy flower that allows us to spray glyphosate herbicide (the chemical in Round-Up) in the field of growing cotton.  This kills the weeds but leaves the cotton unharmed.  But since the Volunteer Cotton that we are considering a weed is resistant to the herbicide, it does not die like the other weeds.

This is in another low lying lake area on the farm of a neighbor.  Notice the harvested rows of bare stalks.

To control the Volunteer Cotton, you have to get the plows back out and plow between the rows of cotton.  Not having to plow the land after it is planted is the whole idea behind planting GMO cottonseed with the glyphosate resistant genetic trait.  The Farmer I Kiss would get to plant and then leave the soil undisturbed to preserve the moisture, but the Volunteer Cotton issue is requiring an early plowing.

This is more representative of the Volunteer Cotton population where the field was plowed early after planting.

One solution is to rotate between varieties of cottonseed that would have resistance to another herbicide such as Dicamba.  That way, the field could be sprayed with a herbicide that your planted cotton is resistant to, but the Volunteer Cotton would not be resistant to it.  Another solution is to rotate the fields with wheat or grain sorghum from year to year.  This allows for different types of herbicides to be used to rid the fields of the Volunteer Cotton plants.  We do have a rotation plan, but we plant cotton for 2 to 3 years in a row before rotating.  So in the meantime, The Farmer I Kiss gets to plow, which he really loves to do, so he really doesn't mind the fact that GMO cotton is not perfect!

When this is the result, some small imperfections are easy to deal with!

Updated:  After a few questions, I thought it would be good to add a little more information.  (1) Why not just leave the Volunteer Cotton Plants?  They get really big and grow very big stalks, which takes a huge amount of water.  Something we have very little of out here next to the Chihuahuan Desert! (2) Why not spray a different herbicide before you plant to kill the Volunteer Cotton and the weeds.  The herbicide that you would have to use can damage or destroy growing grain crops that may be too close to your field.  Drift with these other herbicides is a big problem and one that we choose to avoid.  Round Up does not have quite the drift problems of other herbicides, so we use that exclusively at this time.  (3)  What kind of machine would you have to use to harvest the Volunteer Cotton.  I posted a link here to see the different header (part out in front that gathers the cotton) that would be put on the cotton stripper to get the cotton that is either not in rows or in ultra narrow rows.  It would mean changing out the the front part of the stripper, a pretty major task, then driving all over your field again, which is bad for compacting the soil and using lots of fuel.

TOPGUARD Fungicide for Texas Cotton Gets Top Marks!

For the second year in a row, the Farmer I Kiss used TOPGUARD Fungicide when he planted our cotton.  You may have read my previous two blogs about TOPGUARD, Serendipity and No Fungus Among Us, where I have talked about the 100 year fight West Texas cotton farmers have had with cotton root rot.  The results that area farmers have gotten with TOPGUARD are amazing.  Fields of beautiful white cotton have replaced fields of white cotton mixed in with huge areas of black, dead cotton.  Here is a link to a great short video showing our neighbors and their success with TOPGUARD.  Click Here

Below are photos that show our farm that had TOPGUARD and a farm 1/2 mile away that did not have TOPGUARD applied.  The trees in the background of the neighboring farm are the trees around our barn, so you can see that the farms are very close to one another.  The results are very evident:

 

Our field of cotton with TOPGUARD back on 9/15/2013

Neighboring field and all the brown plants have died from Root Rot

Acres and Acres of cotton are affected

Why is there one plant that is unaffected?  No one knows that answer!

That's our barn in the background where our farm of Root Rot-Free cotton lies.  I would add that where the cotton did not die of root rot, this neighboring field produced very good cotton.

TOPGUARD is not without it's drawbacks.  Cotton is a tricky plant to get established each spring to say the least, and applying the new fungicide adds a new twist to that all important task.  The TOPGUARD has to be applied at exactly the right spot, so that when the seed sprouts, it can sprout through the fungicide and have it taken in by the cotton plant.  This way, the plant then protects it's self from the fungus that lives in the soil.

 Working out the specific details as to how you apply the TOPGUARD with each of the different types of planters is proving to be a very hot topic at the coffee shops and cotton gin offices.  Our friend, Marcus, shared some photos of his rigging:

These are a close up of the sprayer attached to a planter. 

The tricky part is planting while applying the TOPGUARD at exactly the right time.  A rain on the newly planted seed can cause it to seriously slow down sprouting and emerging by reducing the vigor of the seedling.  So watching the Weather Channel each night becomes very serious business during planting season.

Look closely and you will see that only one row of cotton is up.  This row had a nozzle that was not working and did not get TOPGUARD applied.  The other rows had working nozzles and it took several more days before they emerged.  Eventually all the cotton emerged and this field does not have any root rot.

We had a big, fast, hard falling three inch rain on one of our farms after we had planted with TOPGUARD and before the seed had sprouted.  This washed the loose soil in and packed the seed bed so tight that the tiny cotton plants could not push through so we had to replant. Along the outside of the field, we found plants trying to push through the crust where Daniel's planter missed a few inches, showing that the plants were not affected by the rain on the TOPGUARD.  We hope that tells us that we applied it at the right depth. 

These are some seedlings that were trying to push up through the hard crust that formed after the 3" rain.  This is why we had to replant the entire field, not because of any negative effects from the TOPGUARD.

 

 Once Daniel replanted, we got a perfect stand within 5 days of planting, and the end result shows that the TOPGUARD was still there and was taken up by the plants so that they were protected from the root rot fungus.

Replanted cotton just coming up next to a stand of older cotton that was planted earlier and came up prior to the big rain.

Perfect little cotton plants protected from the evils of Cotton Root Rot by TOPGUARD!!

 Many farmers are foregoing the cost and headaches of applying TOPGUARD and just living with the dead cotton in their fields.  Perhaps they are waiting until the farmers who are using the fungicide, like the one I Kiss, have worked out all the kinks.  I for one am happy to be standing on the turn row with the Farmer I Kiss, looking at beautiful fields of white cotton this year!

"If Only...": Even GMO Cottonseed Can't Survive A Desert Downpour

If only...the Farmer I Kiss was finished planting...It had been a stressful few weeks because the moisture was disappearing at a rate faster than the tractor could plant.  So the longer he planted, the deeper he had to push the seed into the soil.  With the first day of planting finally just peeking out of the soil, the rest of the seed were sitting about 2 1/2 inches deep...too deep to be planting cotton but doing it anyway to chase the last of the moisture.  Then it happened.  A 3 1/2 inch rain in about 30 minutes.  A Desert Downpour.

This was a field of planted cotton.

 If only...That's what Daniel kept saying as he shook his head, looking at the fields of standing water and buried cottonseed.  If only that rain had came 3 weeks earlier, then he could have planted very shallow, the seed would have emerged in just a few days, life would be good.  If only that rain had came 1 week later, the seed he had planted would have already been emerged and happily drinking it all up.  But "If only" didn't happen.  So now, the seed has too much soil washed in on top of it, the sun has baked it and even the very expensive GMO/Crossbred/Favorite cottonseed can't push through that.

Load # 2

If only...we didn't have to go back to the seed dealer for a new load of seed.  Most seed companies have a replant policy that allows the farmer to buy new seed at a discounted rate, so at least it won't cost quite what the first round did.  And our TOPGUARD fungicide for the Cotton Root Rot (which I have wrote about in previous posts Serendipity and No Fungus Among Us) should still be there waiting to protect the new seed.  Since this is only the second year that TOPGUARD has been used for Cotton Root Rot, a lot is still left to learn and this will be a great way to know how a Desert Downpour affects it for future crops.  Daniel is watching closely and jumping from field to field where spots dry up so he can get back in them and replant almost every acre.  Chihuahuan Desert 1...Wilde Farms 0...

TOPGUARD should still be waiting for the new seed.

 Bright side:  Even though the cotton will be a little later, it will now have a really good start, which is about 50% of the battle out here.  That rain will carry it through several weeks before needing another good drink.  We don't need a lot of rain to grow cotton out here next to the largest desert in North America, we just need it to fall at the right times.  If only...the Farmer I Kiss had a crystal ball... 

That seed costs WHAT!!!

How does it stack up: STAX, WTO and Cotton

Although the Farmer I Kiss raises some wheat and milo in order to rotate the land from cotton every two to four years, these crops are planted mainly for their foliage that can be incorporated into the topsoil.  They are not his primary focus, because at the end of the day, no matter which crop is in the field, he is a cotton farmer. 

A Cotton Rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.

Cotton Organizations

One of the things that comes with being a cotton farmer are the great cotton organizations that exist across the southern states.  One of the best is the National Cotton Council, (NCC) who "serves as the central forum for consensus-building among producers, ginners, warehousers, merchants, cottonseed processors/dealers, cooperatives and textile manufacturers. The organization is the unifying force in working with the government to ensure that cotton's interests are considered."   The regional organization here is the Southern Rolling Plains Cotton Growers, (SRPCG) who are members along with other regional groups of the Texas Cotton Producers, Inc. (TCP)  Our very good friend and fellow Concho Valley cotton farmer is currently the president of  TCP.   These organizations have spent the past couple of years developing a program for cotton producers called STAX, Stacked Income Protection Plan for Upland Cotton.


STAX and the WTO

STAX is an additional crop insurance product that can be purchased in addition to the regular crop insurance policy.  It helps to cover the large deductibles that the regular crop insurance policy has and works as an area-wide type of a product instead of basing coverage on a farmers individual operation and yields.  Many of the aspects of the STAX program were developed to answer the issues that are unique to cotton due to a World Trade Organization dispute that Brazil raised against features of the U. S. cotton program.  In March, the Delta Farm Press stated, "Besides providing a much-needed safety net for an industry that is reeling from a greater-than-50-percent reduction in cotton prices over the last two years, policymakers also face the challenge of ultimately settling the WTO case filed by the government of Brazil nearly a decade ago."

Direct Payments Eliminated

The STAX program has been embraced by most policymakers who are involved in creating the new Farm Bill currently being put together in Washington, D. C. As it was originally designed, STAX in combination with the elimination of direct payments, SURE disaster program and counter-cyclical payments would reduce spending in the cotton program by an estimated 46%, a number that is much greater than many other commodities are proposing for their spending reductions.

Strong Safety Net

The supply of food and fiber are a vital part of our national security.  The natural disasters of the past two years have brought our food and fiber supply under attack, reenforcing the need for a strong, stable and affordable safety net with crop insurance serving as it's backbone.  As the new Farm Bill looks to eliminate most of cotton's program funds, support for the STAX program as an affordable option for the portion of their risks that currently have no coverage is basically unanimous among cotton producers across the cotton belt.   Organizations like the NCC, SRPCG and TCP are working hard to represent the cotton farmers, like the one I Kiss, from all across the cotton belt as our policymakers develop a Farm Bill that will have sweeping changes and much needed spending reductions.

Decision 2013: Drought Resistant & GMO Cottonseed Varieties leading the polls

About this time each year, the Wilde household takes on a full blown campaign atmosphere.  The Farmer I Kiss and I both have very strong opinions about which brand and variety of cottonseed to plant.  Lying around the house you will find lots of magazines and brochures conspicuously left opened to a favorite brand, or maybe a new, exciting variety.  Big red circles have been drawn around the front runners.

Waiting for our food at the restaurant...Daniel just happened to have some reading to do...

Underneath all the hub-bub, Daniel studies carefully to try and find just that right combination of crossbreed and genetic technologies which could give him just a tiny edge up on the Chihuahuan Desert.  The main concern right now is finding a variety that will tolerate both the extremely low humidity and extremely high heat which we have been experiencing the past few years.  Many brands have varieties that are proving to be drought tolarant, but not all droughts are the same.  Producing cotton with less rainfall is one thing.  Producing cotton with less rainfall, 10% humidity and 110 degree heat is quite another. This is where he depends on the years of cross breeding done by seed companies, followed by farmer planted trial plots to finally isolate the traits which will form the perfect "Edge of the Chihuahuan Desert" dryland cotton variety.

Last year in the Concho Valley, one particular brand and variety,  Deltapine 1044 seemed to beat all the rest in both production and quality.  Unfortunately, we didn't plant that variety.  We planted a variety that has been a top producer with excellent quality for several years, but just didn't hold up to the low humidity and high heat of 2012, FiberMax 1740.  Daniel likes to choose a variety that has a good showing from farm to farm in the farmer field trials.  Not the one that suddenly jumps out of no where to the front of one trial and not the one that lags at the bottom of all the trials.

I am pulling for one of the new-comers this year!

Daniel also has to take into consideration how early he will plant.  The relative maturity of varieties come in Early, Medium and Full season.  If he plants in mid to late May, that takes an entirely different variety than when he has to wait until late June.  Trying to guess the rainfall situation in May or June in order to pre-book a variety now does not always work out as planned!  A change in planting intentions can leave him with a barn of Full season seed while he frantically tries to locate somewhere to buy a barn full of Early seed!

Another vital issue is insect pressure.  Every storm from the south can bring in a new crop of boll worms.  These vile little creatures can strip a cotton plant clean in a matter of a few days.  That makes the bollworm resistant genetic trait (Bt) very important in the decision.  Thanks to the Bt trait, our farms have been insecticide free for five years.  A friend of ours decided three years ago to forego the Bt trait and planted conventional cottonseed.  He had to spray his fields four times with insecticide and still lost over 30% of the crop.  My brother-in-law farms cotton up on the plains north of here where there is very little insect pressure.  He plants cottonseed every year that does not contain the Bt genetic trait.  For us the choice is Bt genetics or lots of insecticide.

Here's hoping this will be waiting for Daniel's cotton stripper this fall!

So what variety of cottonseed is ahead in the polls?  Will it be one of the big name front runners or a small time dark horse that makes it's way to the planter boxes of the Farmer I Kiss?  More campaigning is needed before Decision 2013!

Cotton Farming doesn't take a winter holiday

Since we are in the dead of winter out here next to the Chihuahuan Desert, one might think that I see a lot more of the Farmer I Kiss.  After all, what would a cotton farmer do while it's too cold to grow cotton?  If I could find him, I would ask him!  So I decided to head out to the farm.

The Dirt Mover!!  Reminds me of a Transformer movie.

When I finally found Daniel, he was in his tractor with a big yellow dirt mover repairing the terraces that were damaged this fall when we had over 10 inches of rain. When fields have slopes to them, these terraces are built, which are really just small dirt dams all running parallel in the field allowing us to harvest and hold the rainwater and topsoil.  The parts of the fields that hold the water in front of the terraces had over filled after the "Hundred Year Rain Event" and finally broken through creating wash-outs which allowed the water to fill up in front of the next terrace.  

Wash out over knee high

Wash flowing into our coastal grass field

Luckily the terraces on the lower end of the field were big enough so that we didn't lose the water and topsoil.  Our coastal grass field caught the water on the other side (which means we should make some really great hay this spring!) 

Hay Hay Hay this spring!

Now comes the slow task of repairing each of the wash-outs without creating holes in the field.  And I do mean S-L-O-W!  One bucket at a time, Daniel finds soil from the right spot and slowly bumps his way back up the field to put the load in the wash-out.  Moving two inches of soil across the terraces on 200 acres of land, one bucket at a time, is certainly not as fast as those old Tonka Trucks used to be in my back yard.  Carefully repairing the terraces can take several weeks in order to not cause damage to other parts of the field.

Small wash out already repaired

Once the the wash outs are filled in, the soil must be put back into condition for raising cotton.  Daniel will hook his tractor to the chisel plow and plow the field from top to bottom.  The chisel plow is 20 feet wide and plows only about 3 to 4 inches deep.  This will only skim the top to loosen the soil and break up all the tractor and harvester tracks from the previous year.

Repaired terrace after running the chisel plow

After the farm has been chiseled, Daniel will hook his tractor on to the lister, a plow that makes beds, or rows, in the soil about 6 inches tall.  He will lay off nine 40 inch rows at a time.  These rows follow the contours of the terraces and also help to hold the precious rainfall we hope to receive this spring.

Hooking onto the lister

  Daniel has found by trial and error over the past 40 years that this minimum tillage combination of shallow chiseling and forming rows works good to keep the top soil from blowing before the cotton is planted and to keep the surface moisture available.  There are some no-till farms in the area, but they are not having the success with cotton that minimum tillage is having.  The desert environment is presenting challenges for no-till that hopefully will be worked out, such as heavy grass infestation and surface moisture that sinks with the extreme heat. For now, our minimum tillage practice can require less herbicide usage than the no-till and the rows help to keep the surface moisture closer to the top for sprouting the newly planted seed.  We normally have only two herbicide applications per year and replace other needs for herbicide applications with spot tillage for weed control.  Daniel likes to have a conventional practice that balances the lowest chemical inputs and lowest tillage instead of going completely one direction or another. 

When all the repairs, conditioning and rows have been completed on the first farm, it all has to happen on the next farm, then the next farm...so if I hope to see the Farmer I Kiss this winter, I will have to hitch a ride in his tractor (which happens to be a great place to steal one of those famous farmer kisses!)

All this...to be here again next fall!

To see more about our soil and water practices, check out our earlier blog  Maybe the most important harvest of all.

Also follow us on our Facebook page as we start a new year of raising cotton on the edge of the largest desert in North America  Kissed A Farmer

A Buggy full of GMO Cotton

For harvest season this year, I left my office each day at noon to go run the boll buggy for the Farmer I Kiss.  So why would I go to work early to get my office work done, then drive 40 miles to the dusty, noisy, bumpy, late night job of cotton harvesting?   Because harvest season is the best time of the year.  It means we actually beat the Chihuahuan Desert and produced cotton! 

The cotton harvester puts a load of cotton in my buggy, then I take it to the module builder

.

 What's that got to do with GMO cotton you ask?  Running the boll buggy gives me time to think in peace without the mess of papers that clutter my desk back in town.  Being the cotton ginner's daughter and farmer kisser that I am, I sat there thinking about, what else but cotton and how GMO technology has made our industry very different than the cotton industry of just a decade ago. Some people don't understand the science behind the technology, and what you don't understand, you normally fear.  Some people, like the Farmer I Kiss, have embraced the technology and love the wonderful benefits that it has provided.

Our beautiful cotton that contains the genetic trait which makes it resistant to the boll worm.

 Thanks to the genetic trait in our cotton that makes it resistant to the boll worm, we did not spray one drop of insecticide on our fields this year.  Not one drop.  Because we don't have to spray for the boll worm any longer, the beneficial insects are flourishing and naturally control the other minor pests.  Now, if we planted non-GMO cotton, like the farmers in Brazil that Daniel met last spring, we might have to spray our cotton up to 13 times with insecticide.  That's what the Brazilian farmers told him they have to do in order to save their non-GMO cotton crop.  Once they start spraying for the boll worm, then they have to spray for other pests because the beneficials are gone. 13 applications verses 0 applications.  In my book, there is no comparison.

Daniel and some other Texas farmers in a cotton field in Brazil.

Another benefit is how clean our fields stay because of the herbicide resistant trait.  With our fields basically free of weeds, the tractor can stay parked more often.  Daniel uses both herbicides and tillage to control weeds.  This year, he sprayed the entire field once before planting to kill the late winter and young spring weeds.  Then after the spring rains and planting, he sprayed only the parts of the fields that got a second crop of early summer weeds.  This is actually less herbicide used than if he planted non-GMO cotton, because instead of a second spraying on just some of the acres, he would have used a pre-emergant herbicide on all the acres at planting.  He also plowed only around the edges of the fields where weeds love to get started from the roadsides. Other farmers have had the same results as us with different GMO crops.

Daniel and our son-in-law Chris harvesting a clean field of cotton.

 These two genetic traits have cleaned both the air I breath and the water I drink and are preserving the soil that grows my beloved cotton.  Cleaner air since the tractor can stay parked more often.  Cleaner water since there is less herbicide on the surface to run off.  Preserving the soil since tillage has been greatly reduced.  A cleaner product since the insecticide is reduced or even eliminated in some years. That's what thinking time pulling a boll buggy full of GMO cotton will do.  It makes this farmer kisser happy to live in a cleaner world thanks to agriculture's new technology.

There is no Fungus Among Us: TOPGUARD Fungicide proves effective against Cotton Root Rot

In following up on my blog Serendipity, I am happy to report that the Cotton Root Rot fungus that the Farmer I Kiss has fought for 40 years is no where to be found!  The fungicide TOPGUARD worked and our cotton did not die this year.  For the first time in cotton history, there is a treatment THAT WORKS for Cotton Root Rot.

Not a single stalk of dead cotton!

We took a big risk and invested in applying TOPGUARD when we planted our dryland cotton.  It was a huge investment, considering you never know what the year will bring out here next to the Chihuahuan Desert.  The spring started out very favorable with above average rainfall, so in late May Daniel made the final decision to spend $50 per acre on our best farm and see for ourselves if this newest in a long line of promised cures would work.  IT DID!  Where we applied the TOPGUARD at the full approved rate, we had not one dead stalk of cotton.  (OK, that's not totally true.  The pressure dropped on the spray nozzles and there is a tiny little spot where there is dead cotton.)

That's it!  One tiny area where the spray nozzles lost pressure.

Now, take those farmers who decided not to invest in TOPGUARD and you can see the difference:

Neighbor down the road who didn't use TOPGUARD (and who asked to remain anonymous)

TOPGUARD was approved for use on cotton this year for the first time.  It is estimated that cotton root rot causes approximately $29 million dollars damage annually for Texas cotton growers.  Beating this disease will mean amazing cotton production when the rain cooperates.  Right now, the process to allow TOPGUARD to be labeled for cotton permanently is underway.  The fungicide has been used safely on soybean fungus and other crop diseases for many years.

It was only because a fungicide was stockpiled for a soybean fungus that didn't hit the U.S. which caused the whole study on cotton root rot because someone needed to do something with all those jugs in their warehouse and now we don't have dead cotton!  Serendipity folks, serendipity.

See our other posts about TOPGUARD:  If Only and Serendipity

Family Farmer: Who Decides?

I Kiss a Family Farmer. 

Some of the land he farms has been in his family for almost one hundred years.  He does all the work himself at this point in his farming career, except for harvest time when two or three other folks have to help.  Often those are even all family members, including his town dwelling wife at times.  (I can pack a pretty tight module if I do say so myself.)  But lately I have come to realize that many of those out there who are critics of farming think that the Farmer I Kiss should not be allowed to be called a Family Farmer.  They think that he has too much land, too many tractors, a barn that is too big...they contend that he is "Big Ag" or "Corporate Farming."

My View of the Perfect Family Farmer

This leads me to look for a definition of any Family Business.  There is a family here in town who own my three favorite Mexican Food restaurants.  Because they own three restaurants does that disqualify them from being a Family Business?  Are you only allowed to own one restaurant to be a Family Business?   Can that family hire employees to bus tables or do only family members have to bus tables?   If the Farmer I Kiss only owned one tractor, would the critics then let him be called a Family Farmer?  Sounds a bit bizzare when you put it in these terms, but often bizzare ideas are quicker to float around the social media world than truths and facts. 

Is this tractor too big for a Family Farmer?

I recently saw a comment on a blog post which reflected the opinion that most farmland is being farmed by corporations.  I sited the EPA's numbers that show 98% of farmers are Family Farmers.  The commenter promptly said that may be so, but those 98% only farm 2% of the land.  He had no information to site for his numbers, which is pretty common in social media.  Just make something up and throw it out there.  Other facts from USDA show that his comment is completely incorrect.

Do you have to hand harvest to be a Family Farmer?

I have been around farmers and farming since the day I was born.  I have yet to personally know some huge, faceless corporation that farms.  Where are they?  Who are they?  So I started looking at all the farmers I know more closely.  I do in fact know some corporate farmers.  I won't use names, because it's just plain rude to start talking about folks on the internet without their permission.  But for example, lets take a dad and his two sons who farm about 2500 acres with lots of tractors and plows.  They have their operation set up as an LLC, Limited Liability Corporation.  This makes very good business sense, and it provides some protection of their home and personal assets from lawsuits against the LLC.  Now, the dad and his sons do 98% of all the work.  They drive all the tractors, plant all the crops, harvest all the acres (except maybe an extra person or two to build modules at harvest, which most likely is a nephew or the Farmer Wife they Kiss.)  But, since the dad and the two sons operate under "Dad & Sons Farms, LLC," do they no longer get to be considered as Family Farmers?  Are they now a huge, faceless corporation?  No.

It seems to me that a lot of this labeling or refusing to allow a label may be a reflection of the class warfare being waged in our country.  There are those who want to put a limit on what is ok to have or have not.  If Farmer One has too many acres, he is too big, he can't be considered a hard working Family Farmer.  Is it only Farmer Two, who has a five acre garden he handpicks himself, who can be considered a hard working Family Farmer?  Is it really too many acres, or is it that Farmer One apperas to be more successful than Farmer Two?  I hope our country is not going toward a time when the American Dream of running a successful Family Business of any size will be looked upon as a bad thing. 

I have decided to create the definition of a Family Farmer that will apply to this blog site for the rest of the blog's life:  Family Farmer  (noun)  person or persons growing food, fiber and fuel who are actively engaged in the day to day operation and process of growing a crop regardless of the size of the operation or processes.  The person or persons must care for and about the land they use to grow said food, fiber and fuel.  They must go about the growing process in a responsible manner following strict guidelines set forth by the UDSA, FDA and EPA.

I Kiss a Family Farmer.

Follow our adventure on https://www.facebook.com/KissedAFarmer

Maybe the Most Important Harvest of All: Rainfall Harvesting in the Desert

The Farmer I Kiss spends a month or so each year harvesting cotton.  The other 11 months are spent harvesting something else.  Water.  Every drop of rainfall out here next to the Chihuahuan Desert is precious.  One of the problems with our rainfall is that it usually falls very fast from quick moving thunderstorms.  We seldom get slow storms that sit in and rain for a few days at a time.  So farmers have devised lots of different methods to capture every drop of these fast moving showers.

15 minutes after a fast, one inch rain, the contour rows are holding the water

The method we use is contour farming.  We have a series of terraces built throughout our farms.  These are small, continuous mounds that follow the elevation changes of the field.  Between these terraces, we make rows that follow the terraces early each season by using a plow called a lister.  This all works to even out the elevation changes and hold every precious drop of water that falls.  It also prevents wash out's from eroding away the top soil.  Holding top soil is every bit as important as holding the rain.

The same rows a week later and the cotton is, as Daniel puts it, "Growing like weeds!"

Another method that can be used is called diking.  This is an implement pulled behind the lister that creates small holes or dams within the rows.  This can catch even more rainfall.  The problem with dikes are that you can't run your tractor, harvester or a spray rig down the rows with the dikes.  If you have ever rode your bicycle over the railroad tracks, you will understand why!  So only a few of your rows can have the dikes in them.

Example of dikes from our friend's farm.  Notice how he only diked one row.

Over the next year, the Farmer I Kiss is developing a plan that will allow us to use these dikers in all but the two rows where he will run all the equipment: the tractor, harvester and spray rig.  I will keep you up to date on this plan.  It is very exciting and could greatly increase our water harvest, which we KNOW would increase our cotton harvest out here next to the Chihuahuan Desert.