Sturgeon Farmland News

December, 1997 THE LATEST SCOOP ON YOUR FARMLAND Volume 9, Number 4

Cotton Harvest News

Despite the problems with the irrigation pump which prevented our tenant from irrigating for nine days during July, this year's cotton harvest was a modest success. The upland cotton yielded about 2.48 bales per acre and the Pima cotton yielded about 3.26 bales per acre. Our tenant received about $.73 per pound for his upland cotton and about $1.04 per pound for his Pima cotton. He is giving serious consideration to planting all of his cotton land to Pima cotton in 1998.

Grain Planting Delayed

Our farmland received heavy rains during late November and early December. These rains have prevented our tenant from planting the wheat he usually plants during that time. As this is being written, he has returned to the tillage work necessary to prepare the fields for both grain planting and next year's cotton planting.

Rent Unaffected by Irrigation Pump Outage

Our tenant has somehow managed to maintain last year's rent level. Asked to explain this, he answered, "Well, you see, since I had all the farm planted to cotton instead of some of it being planted to wheat, the overhead expenses were spread over more cotton acres. And since cotton is the only crop I make any money on anyway, this improved the bottom line." Asked why he didn't just plant all cotton every year, he said, "Oh, no, that wouldn't do. I really don't have enough water to grow cotton during a very hot summer, and besides, that wheat rotation is good for the land."

Early Grain Harvester

This is a photograph from the Sturgeon Archives of an early grain harvester in California's San Joaquin Valley. The exact year and location are unknown, but our best guess is that it was made on the west side of Merced County in about 1906.

Robert Sturgeon
Publisher, Editor, Reporter, Ace Photographer, Newsroom Flunky, Webmaster
rsturge@inreach.com
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