Two thousand sixteen was a good year for corn growers in Arizona. There were record high yields of grain corn, with farmers producing more than 10 million bushels for the first time ever, according to the recently released U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual report.
And, a better year for cotton: Arizona’s cotton farmers harvested a third more cotton than the year before.
USDA state statistician Dave DeWalt says cotton is slowly making a comeback after growers turned away from the crop because of low prices.
“The cotton rebounded, mainly the Upland cotton, rebounded from last year’s nearly record low acreage, and these (records) go back to 1923, something like that.”
In 2015, farmers planted fewer cotton acres than ever before, because of low prices. The harvest increased by a third on just over a 100,000 acres across the state.
“We’re nowhere near the production levels we were 20 years ago maybe, when we were at 500-600,000 bales," DeWalt said. "This year we’re looking at 390,000 bales, total production.”
While cotton numbers are up, lemon production is forecast to be down this year, and farmers produced a third less wheat in 2016.
