Steve M. Brown is a 1978 graduate in agronomy and soils from Auburn University and later earned MS and PhD degrees in agronomy/weed science at Auburn and Texas A&M, respectively. He worked as an assistant county agent in a cotton pest management role for a couple of years in northern Alabama and then served as a research associate in a Cotton Incorporated-funded project on no-till cotton from 1980 to 1984. From 1987 until 2008, he served as an Extension weed scientist and cotton agronomist for the University of Georgia in Tifton. He worked for a major seed and biotechnology company from 2008 until 2019, when he joined the faculty at Auburn. His entire career has focused on cotton.
Michael A. Jones is an Extension Cotton Specialist and Professor of Agronomy at Clemson University. Mike was raised on a small beef-cattle farm located in Nottoway, Virginia. He attended North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, receiving the BS degree in Agronomy in 1989. Upon graduation, he stayed in Raleigh, entered the Graduate School at North Carolina State University and received his MS degree in Soil Science in 1991 and his PhD degree in Crop Science in 1994. He joined the faculty of Mississippi State University in 1994 as an Assistant Agronomist and conducted research evaluating cotton management systems in the Mississippi Delta. Mike was located at the Delta Research & Extension Center in Stoneville, Mississippi for almost four years, where his research focused on developing sustainable, profitable cotton production systems for conventional and narrow-rows on the major soil types of the Mississippi Delta. The main objectives of his research program at Stoneville involved developing cropping systems to increase yields and net profits of growers while reducing tillage, production costs, and pollution to the environment by integrating all aspects of crop production (tillage systems, row spacing, planting dates, plant populations, rotations, cover crops, etc) into sound production systems, as well as by fully understanding the associations between cotton lint quantity/quality and growth factors characteristic of the region. Dr. Jones accepted a position with Clemson University in July of 1998 and currently serves as State Cotton Extension Specialist for South Carolina where his responsibilities include coordinating and conducting state-wide educational programs related to cotton production in South Carolina. His duties include organizing and conducting state and county educational meetings, organizing and conducting on-farm and research station trials and demonstrations, and establishing and advising state commodity associations. Dr. Jones also has a research appointment with Clemson University, where he has established an applied research program focusing on agronomic management issues in cotton production in South Carolina.
Ken Lege is an Extension cotton specialist at Lubbock’s Texas A&M AgriLife Extension & Research Center. While his career began as a cotton specialist at Clemson University, he’s spent much of his profession developing cotton varieties with companies such as, Monsanto, Delta and Pine Land Company, Sure-grow Seed and most recently, Corteva Agriscience.
