Oklahoma cotton farmer harvests zero bales for first time in 48 years

Mark Nichols will not harvest a single boll of cotton this season — the first total crop failure in his 48-year farming career. An insurance adjuster zeroed out his southwest Oklahoma cotton in mid-October, closing out a year shaped by drought and the hottest September the region has recorded since 1931.

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. Last season the same land produced what he believes may have been the biggest cotton crop Jackson County has ever made.

"2025 was a fabulous crop for this area in southwest Oklahoma … record setting," Nichols said. "The only negative was the price was not great."

Twelve months later, his John Deere CP770 picker sits idle while shredders work the fields instead. Rain finally arrived in October. It came too late.

What went wrong before planting?

The failure began in winter. Neither of the family's two irrigation sources recharged. The Jackson County land draws from the Lugert-Altus Irrigation District reservoir; the Tillman County farms pump from the Tillman Terrace aquifer. Both depend on recharge rainfall, and winter rains never came.

"We had no winter rains to replenish either our reservoir or our underground for our wells where we have pivots," Nichols said. "It's happened before. We'll be dry going into a crop, and then we get rains in late June and July, and we end up making a good crop."

The rains did not arrive. Even the family's wheat suffered. They harvest wheat for cover crop seed, and this year they salvaged only 5 to 10 bushels — barely enough to keep seed in the barn.

How did he manage a crop under drought?

Nichols treated his irrigated cotton like a dryland crop from the start. He planted 15 to 20 days later than usual, cut his seeding rate and spoon-fed fertilizer rather than committing capital upfront.

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

In Jackson County, the dry reservoir meant stacks of irrigation siphon tubes never left the barn. In Tillman County, the family irrigated normally at first, but by mid-July lacked the groundwater to keep every pivot running and began shutting some down. By September the remaining pivots were off — typical 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.

The crop looked deceptively viable until defoliation. "You'd drive by and think, 'You know what? This cotton still looks good,' after we quit watering," he said. Then the reality: "What's out there is shriveled up to nothing and the size of a walnut."

By August he estimated half his acres remained harvestable. By October, none did.

What happens to the machinery and the land?

The pickers will stay put. Nichols had hauled them to the Texas coast earlier in the summer under a long-standing harvest-sharing arrangement with a Corpus Christi-area farmer, since cotton is picked earlier in that region. When it became clear he would harvest nothing, the Texas farmer offered to park the machines in his own barn rather than truck them home.

Back in Oklahoma, Nichols is shredding stalks instead of picking and has sown his fall cover crop — traditionally planted when the pickers leave the field, this year planted behind the shredders. The interseeded wheat between the rows is already responding to October rainfall, and the shredded stalks carry green regrowth and even a bloom or two.

"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."

He concedes sleepless nights questioning whether he could have done more. His own answer is blunt: "We couldn't control any of it."

What changes for 2027?

Nichols is not abandoning cotton. He is reducing his dryland cotton acres and shifting some ground into alfalfa, with additional dryland acres rolling into wheat for rotation.

He frames 2026 as an anomaly without precedent in his 48 years, not a new normal.

"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."

Farmers across the Southern Plains should watch winter recharge of reservoirs and the Tillman Terrace aquifer into early 2027 — that rainfall, not spring planting decisions, will determine whether Nichols and his neighbours can rebuild cotton acres next season.