Many areas of Texas received rain by Tuesday of last week, but in most of the state the agricultural situation remained extremely dire, according to reports from Texas AgriLife Extension Service personnel.

Soil moisture remained short most everywhere, except in North Texas. But there, despite good rains, moisture was still reported as merely adequate.

In most areas, wheat grown for grain has been lost or yields severely reduced, according to reports from AgriLife Extension county agents.

Cotton planting continued in areas where the planting window is later, such as the South Plains and Rolling Plains, but the situation in those regions doesn’t look promising either, said Mark Kelley, AgriLife Extension regional specialist based in Lubbock.

In an average year, the South Plains grows about 4 million acres of cotton, about 60 percent or more of the state’s total acreage.

Cotton has largely failed in South Texas and the plantings are at risk in Central Texas.

Because the planting window is later in the South Plains, there was hope the drought conditions would lift in time for cotton.

“We’ve been in the planting window for a while now,” Kelley said. “It’s just we’re having issues keeping the ground wet enough, even under irrigated situations, to get a good stand.”

Farmers with center pivots are able to get the planting zone wet enough to get a good emergence, he said.

Those with only drip irrigation — unless they have the option to roll water (surge irrigation) or have a sprinkler system over the drip — are having trouble keeping the moisture high enough in the soil profile to plant.

“For the dryland guys, the moisture is non-existent. We’ve got some that are trying to trickle seed in to the dry dirt and just hope for rain,” Kelley said. “It’s looking pretty bleak here.”

Meanwhile, the opportunities for planting to produce a viable crop and to meet crop insurance deadlines are fast approaching.

From a national standpoint, Texas is a “minor player” in feed grains, said Travis Miller, AgriLife Extension program leader and associate department head of the soil and crop sciences department.

But Texas typically plants about half the cotton acreage in the U.S., so a large-scale crop failure here could have a large impact on prices nationally.

For more information on the Texas drought and wildfire alerts, visit the AgriLife Extension Agricultural Drought Task Force website at agrilife.tamu.edu/drought/.