Despite Mother Nature wiping out almost three-fourths of the cotton acreage they planted, farmers in Dawson County still wound up producing some 149,000 bales of cotton last year. That is according to statistics released earlier this month by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, which reports production in average 480-pound bales. Dawson County’s 149,000 bales came from a combined total of 92,400 acres of irrigated and dryland (non-irrigated) cotton harvested here last year, for an average yield of 774 pounds per harvested acre. Perhaps the most telling figure about the type of year it was for local farmers is the fact that they ...