John Hart, Associate Editor, Southeast Farm Press 

At a Glance

• Farmers cut cotton acreage due to weak demand and high costs
• Weed control more challenging without dicamba this season
• Growers optimistic despite difficulties, adapting strategies

Cotton farmers Rusty Darby of Chester County, S.C., Jonathan Evans of Nash County, N.C., and Donny Lassiter of Northampton, N.C., are facing one of the most difficult seasons they have ever seen.   

Low cotton prices, high production expenses and never-ending competitive pressure from synthetic fibers make producing the crop they love a real challenge this year. As Lassiter notes, he has faced bumps and down cycles before, but something just feels different compared to past seasons. 

An added challenge is that dicamba is not available for weeds this year. 

“Cotton used to be one of the safest crops we grow, and now it’s one of the riskiest when it comes to economics. It’s been a paradigm shift,” Lassiter told Southeast Farm Press in a July 15 interview. 

Acreage down 

Lassiter said Northampton County traditionally plants 40,000 acres of cotton each year. This year, it’s down 50% to 20,000 acres.  

Lassiter and brother Mark have also reduced their cotton acreage this year. He said the big drivers are weaker demand for cotton and higher production costs compared to other crops.  

Darby, a 2023 Farm Press High Cotton Award Winner, also cut his 2025 South Carolina cotton acreage and has turned to cost-cutting measures. He said he loves what he does and has always loved growing cotton, but it is hard to get excited right now. 

“We tried to reduce some seed, do a thinner population. We’re looking hard at how we top dress. We are just getting into bloom. We will try to be more restrictive with top dressing and try to hold costs down there. We were already doing prescriptions for that. We’ve squeezed everything as tight as we can find a way to squeeze it,” Darby said. 

The veteran South Carolina cotton farmer worries about what the future holds and how long it will take to get through it. He is considering how to better directly compete with synthetic fibers.  

“We need to find a way to compete better with polyester. We need to find a way to compete better with rayon. We need to compete better with other manmade fibers. We need to address that more directly. We need to target our competition more,” Darby stressed.  

Weed difficulties 

Evans admits that cotton weed control has been more challenging this year without dicamba. He’s hopeful the technology will be available next year, but until then, he is relying on Liberty and adjusting his weed control strategy to often spraying more frequently. 

“We definitely had to change our herbicide approach with no dicamba. It’s not as easy as everybody said it was going to be. A lot of it had to do with our weather because we have had rain which prevented us from getting into the field in a timely manner. With Liberty you have to be timely. You can’t be late. When you had the dicamba, you had a little bit of wiggle room, not much, but you had some,” Evans said. 

Evans, who farms with his father Keith and mother Ann, said he has used Liberty in the past, particularly in fields close to tobacco, sweetpotatoes and peanuts, due to restrictions on dicamba to sensitive crops. But in his larger fields, with no competing crops, he relied on dicamba in the past and misses it. 

Both Lassiter and Darby are also making do without dicamba and are hoping it will be available next year.  

Like Evans, Darby has turned to Liberty this year. He’s had to make a second application, and some pigweed is still coming back. Lassiter misses dicamba as well, but he has used Liberty in the past and has turned to the technology again this year and was able to stay on top of weeds. 

Cover crops and cotton conditions 

Cover crops are also an important part of the Evans family’s weed control strategy. But there were challenges this season. 

“We tried to get a good cover crop to plant into to help with weed suppression this year. The fields that we are having the most problem with controlling pigweed are the fields where we were not able to get a cover crop planted last fall,” Evans said.  

So far, all three cotton farmers say the 2025 cotton crop looks promising for good quality yields. But they are quick to add that it is still early, and anything can happen weatherwise come harvest. 

Evans said his cotton crop looks excellent. He said the big challenge is being timely with herbicide sprays because of numerous rain showers in June and July. Still, Evans said he welcomes the rain to help his cotton grow. 

“The challenge is we are trying to conserve with the low commodity prices and high input prices.  We are trying to be a little more conservative with our inputs. What helped us this year with our fertilizer is we were able to book our inputs at early pricing and take advantage of 0% financing offered by different companies. We did a little planning ahead to get ahead of any price spikes.” 

In the meantime, North Carolina Extension Cotton Specialist Guy Collins said farmers across the state are adapting to the loss of dicamba in 2025. Some went to the Enlist system, but only in certain pockets of the state.  

For those who turned to Liberty, Collins agrees with Evans: timeliness is key to treat small weeds. “A good residual program is a must, and many of our growers are accustomed to a Liberty-based system,” the cotton specialist said. 

“Start clean; that starts at burndown. From then on, it’s important to have overlapping residuals, even postemergence.  The goal is to minimize the weeds that do emerge. The ones that do emerge, you have to treat in a very timely manner when they are small,” Collins said. “Our NCSU weed scientist (Charlie Cahoon) has very effective weed management recommendations for a number of systems, but timeliness and effective residual programs are important to these programs.”