Jun 23, 2010
Brazil Experimenting With a 60-day Cotton Free Period
Author: Michael Cordonnier/Soybean & Corn Advisor, Inc.
By the end of June virtually all the principal soybean producing states in Brazil will enter into the period when no live soybeans will be allowed either on farms or around commercial grain facilities. This soybean-free program started about five years ago and is credited with delaying the onset of soybean rust into commercial soybean fields. The spores of soybean rust can not live more than 60 days without a host plant so the idea is to eliminate the host plants as much as possible in order to break the life cycle of the disease. The most common host plant is soybeans so there is a very concerted effort to make sure there are no soybeans growing during this period. Legitimate soybean research plots and seed increases are exempt, but they must be licensed and closely monitored by state agencies to insure that the soybean rust is under control.
With the success of the soybean-free period helping to control soybean rust, one Brazilian state is trying to do the same thing with cotton for the first time. In the state of Minas Gerais, it will be prohibited to have any live cotton plants on your farm for 60 days between August 20 and October 20. This program is designed to break the life cycle of the bole weevil. This is the first year for the program and it remains to be seen how effective it is going to be.
During the 2010/11 growing season farmers in the state of Minas Gerais cultivated 15,600 hectares of cotton and produced 57,450 tons of cotton on 80 properties. During the 2010/11 growing season, farmers in the state planted 1,020,000 hectares of soybeans and produced 2.9 million tons of soybeans.