The Story of The Importance of Cotton No one knows exactly how old cotton is. Scientists Today, the world uses more cotton than any other searching caves in Mexico found bits of cotton fiber, and cotton is a leading cash crop in the U.S. bolls and pieces of cotton cloth that proved to At the farm level alone, the production of be at least 7,000 years old. They also each year’s crop involves the pur- found that the cotton itself was much chase of more than $5.3 billion like that grown in America today. worth of supplies and services. This In the Indus River Valley in Pakistan, cot- stimulates business activities for ton was being grown, spun and factories and enterprises through- woven into cloth 3,000 years BC. out the country. Processing and At about the same time, natives handling of cotton after it leaves of Egypt’s Nile valley were mak- the farm generates even more ing and wearing cotton clothing. business activity. Annual business revenue stimulated by cotton in the Arab merchants brought cotton cloth U.S. economy exceeds $120 bil- to Europe about 800 A.D. When lion, making cotton America’s Columbus discovered America in number one value-added crop. 1492, he found cotton growing in the Bahama Islands. By 1500, cotton Cotton is a part of our daily lives from was known generally throughout the the time we dry our faces on a soft world. cotton towel in the morning until we slide between fresh cotton sheets at Cotton seed are believed to have night. It has hundreds of uses, from blue jeans been planted in Florida in 1556 to shoe strings. Clothing and household items are and in Virginia in 1607. By 1616, colonists the largest uses, but industrial prod- were growing cotton along the James River in ucts account from many thou- Virginia. sands of bales. Cotton was first spun by machinery in England in All parts of the cotton plant 1730. The in England and the are useful. The most impor- invention of the cotton gin in the U.S. paved the tant is the fiber or lint, which way for the important place cotton holds in the is used in making cotton world today. cloth. Linters – the short fuzz , a native of Massachusetts, secured a on the seed – provide cellulose patent on the cotton gin in 1793, though patent for making plastics, explosives office records indicate that the first cotton gin may and other products. Linters also have been built by a machinist named Noah are incorporated into high quality Homes two years before Whitney’s patent was paper products and processed into filed. The gin, short for engine, could do the work batting for padding mattresses, furniture and auto- 10 times faster than by mobile cushions. hand. The cottonseed is crushed in order to separate its The gin made it pos- three products – oil, meal and hulls. Cottonseed sible to supply large oil is used primarily for shortening, cooking oil and quantities of cotton salad dressing. The meal and hulls that remain fiber to the fast- are used either separately or in combination as growing textile industry. livestock, poultry and fish feed and as fertilizer. Within 10 years, the value of The stalks and leaves of the cotton plant are the U.S. cotton crop rose from $150,000 to more plowed under to enrich the soil. than $8 million. Some cottonseed also is used as high-protein con- centrate in baked goods and other food products. Where Cotton Grows them and packs the earth on top of them. The seed is planted at uniform intervals in either small Cotton grows in warm climates and most of the clumps (“hill-dropped”) or singularly (“drilled”). world’s cotton is grown in the U.S., Uzbekistan, the People’s Republic of China and . Other Machines called cultivators are used to uproot leading cotton-growing countries are Brazil, weeds and grass, which compete with the cotton Pakistan and Turkey. plant for soil nutrients, sunlight and water. In this country, the major cotton-producing states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, About two months after planting, , Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New flower buds called squares Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South appear on the cotton plants. In Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, Florida, another three weeks, the blossoms Kansas and Virginia. open. Their petals change from creamy white to yellow, then pink and finally, dark red. After three days, they wither and fall, leaving green pods which are called cotton bolls. Inside the boll, which is shaped like a tiny The football, moist fibers grow and push yield in the U.S. out from the newly formed seeds. As averages approxi- the boll ripens, it turns brown. The mately 1 1/3 bales per fibers continue to expand under the acres and about 1,078 pounds of seed. A U.S. bale warm sun. Finally, they split the boll weighs around 500 pounds. This yield is about apart and the fluffy cotton bursts forth. It twice as much as in 1950 and is due to better land looks like white cotton candy. use, improved plant varieties, mechanization, fertil- Since hand labor is no longer used in the U.S. to ization and irrigation. It also is a result of much bet- harvest cotton, the crop is harvested by machines, ter control of disease, weeds and insects. A major either a picker or a stripper. part of the credit for this progress goes to scientists Cotton picking machines working at experiment stations and in laboratories, have spindles that and to agricultural extension workers who bring the pick (twist) the findings to farmers. seed cotton from How Cotton is Grown the burrs that are attached to After cotton has been harvested, producers who plants’ stems. use conventional tillage practices cut down and (For a detailed description of picker operation, chop the cotton stalks. The next step is to turn the go to http://www.aces.edu/department/ipm/cottonpicker.htm remaining residue underneath the soil surface. or http://www.csrl.ars.usda.gov/cppru/harv_g.htm#harv.) Producers who practice a style of farming called Doffers then remove the seed cotton from the conservation tillage often choose to leave their spindles and knock the seed cotton into the con- stalks standing and leave the plant residue on the veying system. surface of the soil. Conventional cotton stripping machines use rollers In the spring, farmers prepare for planting in sever- equipped with alternating bats and brushes to al ways. Producers who plant using no-till or con- knock the open bolls from the plants into a con- servation tillage methods, use special equipment veyor. designed to plant the seed through the litter that covers the soil surface. Producers who employ con- A second kind of stripper harvester uses a broad- ventional tillage practices, plow or “list” the land into cast attachment that looks similar to a grain head- rows forming firm seed-beds for planting. er on a combine. All harvesting systems use air to Producers in south Texas plant cotton as early as convey and elevate the seed cotton into a storage February. In Missouri and other northern parts of bin referred to as a basket. Once the basket is the Cotton Belt, they plant as late as June. full, the stored seed cotton is dumped into a boll buggy, trailer or module builder. Seeding is done with mechanical planters which cover as many as 10 to 24 rows at a time. The planter opens a small trench or furrow in each row, drops in the right amount of seed, covers How Cotton is Ginned and Marketed How Cotton is Spun and Woven Today, nearly all cotton is stored in modules, At the textile mill, the bales are opened by which look like giant loaves of bread. Modules machines, and the lint is mixed and cleaned fur- allow the cotton to be ther by blowing and beating. The short lint that stored without loos- comes out usually is separated and sold for use in ing yield or quality other industries. The best part of the lint consists prior to ginning. of fibers about 1 inch to 1 ¾ inches long. Specially designed The mixed and fluffed-up cotton goes into a card- trucks pick up mod- ing machine which cleans the fibers some more ules of seed cotton and makes from the field and move them lie side them to the gin. Modern gins place modules in by side. The front of machines called module feeders. Some combing action module feeders have stationary heads, in which of the carding case, giant conveyors move the modules into the machine finish- module feeder. Other module feeders are self-pro- es the job of pelled and move down a track that along side the cleaning and modules. The module feeders literally break the straightening modules apart and “feed” the seed cotton into the the fibers, and gin. Other gins use powerful pipes to suck the cot- makes them ton into the gin building. Once in the cotton gin, into a soft, untwisted rope called a sliver (pro- the seed cotton moves through dryers and nounced sly-ver). through cleaning machines that remove the gin On modern spinning frames, yarn is mare directly waste such as burs, dirt, stems and leaf material from the sliver. The spinning devices take fibers from the cotton. Then it goes to the gin stand from the sliver and rotate it up to 2,500 revolutions where circular saws with small, sharp teeth pluck in a second twist that makes fibers into a yarn for the fiber from the seed. weaving or knitting into fabrics. From the gin, fiber and seed go different ways. Machines called looms weave cotton yarns into The ginned fiber, now called lint, is pressed fabrics the same way together and made into dense bales weighting the first handweaving about 500 pounds. To determine frames did. Modern the value of cotton, looms work at great samples are taken from speeds, interlacing each bale and classed the length-wise yarns according to fiber length (warp) and the cross- (staple), strength, wise yarns (filling). micronaire, color and The woven fabric, cleanness. Producers called gray goods, is sent to a finishing plant usually sell their cotton where it is bleached, pre-shrunk, dyed, printed to a local buyer or mer- and given a special finish before being made into chant who, in turn, sells it to a tex- clothing or products for the home. Other machines tile mill either in the United States or a make knits for use in shirts, sweaters or blankets. foreign country. This, then, is the story of cotton – where and how The seed usually is sold by the producer to the it is grown, marketed, processed and manufac- gin. The ginner either sells for feed or to an oil mill tured into the many useful products that have where the linters (downy fuzz) are removed in an served the world so well for so long. It is a never- operation very much like ginning. Linters are baled ending story, as scientists continue to develop bet- and sold to the paper, batting and plastics indus- ter ways to produce and use one of the world’s tries, while the seed is processed into cottonseed oldest fibers – cotton. oil, meal and hulls.

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