THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 31, 1994 TAG: 9408300171
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Jody R. Snider
DATELINE: HOLLAND LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Among the topics were peanuts, grain and cotton.
And the audience was about 450 area farmers, all looking for new ways to improve yields or better next year's crops.
At the recent Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center Field Day, farmers were loaded onto trailers and hauled to experimental plots of cotton, peanuts, grain and even weeds - for morning and afternoon tours.
The most talked-about crop this year is not well known in Virginia - a grain crop called sorghum.
Dan Brann, a grain specialist with Virginia Tech, said sorghum may be the alternative crop that most farmers are looking for to replace corn. For two years now, corn crops have suffered high losses because of the heat.
Last year, the average corn yield was only 60 bushels per acre, down from 116 bushels in 1992. And this year's corn yield is not much better - about 92 bushels per acre, according to a Virginia Agricultural Statistics Service report.
The result is, many farmers want an alternative crop.
Brann said after experimenting with corn and sorghum to see how much water each crop required, sorghum was found to be more drought resistant than corn.
Sorghum is harvested for animal feed. And the leaves, which look like corn foliage, can also be baled to feed livestock.
Brann said sorghum requires three things: Planting precision, proper fertilization and finding the right hybrid plant for each soil location.
``If we learn to do these three things, then it can be a very competitive crop for us,'' Brann said.
But many farmers believe cotton is also a good alternative crop to corn.
``I wish I had more of it,'' said farmer Jim Williams, who grows 160 acres of cotton in Southampton County.
``I wish I didn't have one acre of corn - not one. I got about five acres of good corn, and you could put it all in this hat,'' he said holding out his farm cap.
On the afternoon tour, farmers were told that the key to getting a good cotton crop is getting the young plant off to a good start.
Farmers also learned that thick stands of cotton are not always necessary to make a lot of cotton bolls. In fact, cotton reseachers have found that in those areas where the stands are lighter, plants produce more cotton bolls than in heavier planted areas.
``For that reason, it's probably not necessary to replant areas where stands are light,'' said Jim Maitland, extension agent with Dinwiddie County.
Meanwhile, this year's crops are looking good for most farmers, according to the Virginia Agricultural Statistics Service.
Cotton yields are projected at 650 pounds per acre, up 18 pounds from last year's 632 pounds. But more important, cotton production is expected to reach 56,500 bales, up 88 percent from last year. The increase is mainly due to the sharp increase in Virginia acreage.
Harvest acres are expected at 41,700, up from last year's 22,800.
Peanuts are also looking good.
Peanut yields are predicted to average 3,000 pounds per acre, a 60 percent increase from last year. About 92,000 peanut acres are expected to be harvested this year, 2,000 less than last year.
And after a bad year last year, that's good news.
KEYWORDS: AGRICULTURE FARMING INDUSTRY
by CNB