CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — According to Nueces County Ag Agent. Jaime Lopez, the past two years have been tough on cattle ranchers dealing with a drought that left many of them selling off their herds.
"Our cattle numbers are probably the lowest we've had in probably 50 years," Lopez said.
The story hasn't been much better on the farms where our area is among the top producers of sorghum and cotton when there's not a drought.
State Ag experts told 3NEWS that because of all the rain we've seen our corn, sorghum and cotton crops should be as good as they've ever been.
Extension service agronomist Josh McGinty explained how 2024 could turn out to be a great year for farmers and ranchers. They said the best sign of that prosperity is the amount of moisture in the soil we're seeing right now.
"We can almost make a crop on what we have but we need those April, May, maybe early June rains just to put the cherry on top and then we get to late June to mid August that's the period where we really don't want a lot of rain," McGinty said.
He said corn will be planted in the next few weeks, then Sorghum at the end of February. Cotton will be in the ground in March.
Area ranches should be seeing grasses coming back strong. Also, with high cattle prices, Lopez said ranchers will be looking to re-stock their herds to take advantage of the market and weather that seem to be in sync this year.
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