Agriculture and Foresty

Which Texas region has the best agricultre? Lesson Plan ?

I need to do a lesson plan (im a student) on comparing a region of Texas agricultre to the agriculture of a different region in another state. I just dont know which region has the best agriculture in Texas and which other region I could campare it to that would make an impact. ANY help would be greatly appreiciated. thanks in advance.

Each area of Texas has it good and bad points. The Red River Valley while not very large will compete well in productivity with most of Texas. I spent most of my life farming the Oklahoma side just north of Vernon. I inherited ranch land south of Vernon in the Bush Lands. Other than bottom land it hard place for cattle many years. It is getting harder as we get more and more wild hogs eating eveything in site.

I worked some land north of Dallas in the black lands. I does yield well but it is the nastiest, harding pulling stuff I ever farmed. Like all clay soils it is problem when wet or dry and it requires much more careful crop rotation to keep down disease than other soils. It is common to see cotton fields that have 1/3 or more of the cotton killed by they Texas Root Rot fungus and the only long term cure is to take it out of cotton for 5 years or more.

Part of my dislike for the Black Lands was I was feeding 200 cows the winter of 72. It rained all winter and I had enough hay for almost 3 normal years and fed it all. I had to carry a lot of it on foot thought mud when the ground wasn’t frozen.

My wife has an irrigated farm in Lamb County If it doesn’t blow out or get hailed out it is very productive. It has some shallow windmill water so she doesn’t depend 100% on fossil water from the Ogallala that is a declining resource. They have very efficient drops on the center pivot on half of it and even more effect drip on the other half. It is the surest pay we have. Although my farm in Oklahoma beat it this year because the fellow that farms contacted most of the wheat at $11.00 a bushel.

I don’t know what you lesson is but one would think it would be to compare like to like. And the High Plains or Great Plains are the easiest to compare with other land like it up down the face of the Rockies well into Canada. Much of the Plains face the same problem with using more water from their aquifers then they recharge.

I am sure you can find other soils in Texas. The Brazos River bottom can also be productive as most river bottoms are.

I don’t know where you would find a comparison for the black lands, Big Thicket or Coastal Plain. Red River would be difficult too because of it age and being mostly granite based. It is one of the older soils in the country and lacks any kind of subsoil it almost all sand laid down by wind and water except on the edges where it over lays the soils around it.

Best wises
Gordon

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