Zero Bales in Southwest Oklahoma: Drought and 1931-Level Heat Wipe Out Cotton

An insurance adjuster zeroed out Mark Nichols' entire southwest Oklahoma cotton crop in mid-October — the first total failure in his 48-year farming career and a stark reversal from what he believes may have been Jackson County's record cotton season just a year earlier.

Nichols farms thousands of cotton acres with his son, Reid, and his daughter and son-in-law, Morgan and Derrick Burnam, across Jackson and Tillman counties. This season, drought combined with the hottest September since 1931 destroyed the crop. Rain finally arrived in October, but too late to matter. Puddles now stand beneath the steps of his John Deere CP770 picker, parked while shredders work the fields instead.

"It's very disappointing," Nichols said. "We're growers, and whether you're a cotton grower or corn grower or wheat or whatever, it's our nature to produce. So when you're not, it's disheartening."

What went wrong before planting?

The failure began with winter recharge. Nichols' Jackson County land draws irrigation water from the Lugert-Altus Irrigation District, while his Tillman County farms pump from the Tillman Terrace aquifer. Both sources depend on recharge rainfall.

"We had no winter rains to replenish either our reservoir or our underground for our wells where we have pivots," Nichols said. He has seen dry starts before that ended in good crops after late June and July rains. Not this year. Even his wheat suffered: the family harvested only 5 to 10 bushels per acre, just enough to secure seed for their cover crop planting.

Drought skepticism reshaped his agronomy. Nichols planted his irrigated cotton 15 to 20 days later than usual, cut his seeding rate and spoon-fed fertilizer (applying nutrients in small, frequent doses).

"We just weren't going to put a bunch of money into this crop unless it started raining," he said.

How did irrigation hold up?

On the Jackson County farms, the reservoir sat dry, and stacks of irrigation siphon tubes never left the barn. In Tillman County, the family irrigated the crop, but by mid-July they had begun shutting off pivots (center-pivot sprinkler systems) as groundwater ran short.

"We knew the writing was on the wall," Nichols said.

Because irrigation on his operation is supplemental, the crop needed rainfall help that never came. By August, Nichols estimated half his acres remained harvestable, though weak. "At that point, we were out of water, hurting our pumps, hurting our wells," he said.

The remaining pivots shut off in September — normal timing — but the heat never relented. Bolls scattered between the rows told the story. In all his years, Nichols said, he has never seen cotton respond that way.

Why did the crop look harvestable until it wasn't?

The fields stayed deceptive right up to defoliation (the chemical treatment that drops leaves before harvest).

"You'd drive by and think, 'You know what? This cotton still looks good,' after we quit watering," Nichols said. Then he discovered there was little cotton in the field. "What's out there is shriveled up to nothing and the size of a walnut."

The collapse contrasts sharply with 2025, which Nichols called "a fabulous crop for this area in southwest Oklahoma … record setting," possibly the most cotton Jackson County has ever produced. "The only negative was the price was not great," he added.

The aftermath is visible across the operation. Stalks flushed with green regrowth, even a bloom or two, await shredders once the ground dries. Nichols normally sows his fall cover crop as soon as pickers leave the field; this year, seeding followed the shredders.

What happens to the equipment and 2027 plans?

His pickers, hauled to the Texas coast earlier in the summer under a years-long harvest-sharing arrangement with a Corpus Christi-area farmer, will stay there in storage. Because cotton is picked earlier in that region, the two operations have long helped each other harvest.

"We were talking about not harvesting anything," Nichols recalled, "and they were like, 'Well, why are we going to send your pickers home? We'll just put them in our barn down here.'"

For 2027, Nichols is not abandoning cotton, but he is reducing dryland acres (non-irrigated fields) and shifting some ground into alfalfa. The family will also rotate some dryland ground into wheat.

He characterizes 2026 as a weather anomaly he cannot match in 48 years of farming. "You always have hope," he said. "Now, with the technologies we have, the way we fertilize, the way we do things, you can catch up. If you start getting those rains, you can catch up if you need to. But it was just one of those years we were never able to do anything because it just never allowed us to do that."