What I Learned from a Summer Working on a Cotton Farm

If you've been following my blogs, you  may have noticed that I haven't written anything at all in nearly three months. That's because I stumbled onto an internship/job that actually changed my life for the better. As an animal science major, I really don't know much about the specifics of agronomy and crop farming. However, I can confidently say that now I have a better grasp on this sector of agriculture, and the knowledge I acquired was more in-depth than anything I could have learned in the classroom. It also wasn't just about cotton. I also learned about beekeeping, how vineyards work, and how alcohol is made for consumers at large vineyards and breweries.

For purposes of this article, however, I'm going to stick to cotton because it's not a crop many people consider at first thought, probably because most people think you can't eat it (which is another story entirely. I can honestly say that I've eaten cotton, and it wasn't half bad). But cotton has its own place in American agriculture going back hundreds of years. This humble crop shaped politics, started wars, and shaped the identity of important groups of people. I'm wearing a cotton t-shirt while I type this, and I used a cotton ball to take the makeup off my face last night before I went to bed. When you think about it, cotton represents a significant portion of agricultural goods on the market today. There are GMO, conventional, and even organic varieties of cotton, which all have their place in society. Before I begin to tell you how this crop gets from the field to your shirt, I think it's important to start with a history lesson.

Cotton: America's Second Oldest Cash Crop

With the exception of tobacco, cotton is the oldest cash crop ever to be grown in America. The first cotton fabric was found in Mexico in 5800 B.C., and was cultivated as a subsistence crop by 2300 B.C. This "Mexican Cotton" variety is the one now grown widely in the U.S. It got its start as a cash crop after the price of tobacco sharply declined due to inflation, and no longer became profitable.

The very first cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793

This cotton, however, was a different species of long-staple cotton known as "sea cotton" that is native to south America, and is still grown in minority today because of its reputation as a higher-quality cotton. It was easier to remove the seeds from sea cotton, which was called sea cotton because it grew best in coastal areas with humid environments and plenty of rainfall. Before the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, Mexican cotton was too labor intensive to be farmed as a cash crop, even by slaves. It wasn't until after the gin's invention that Mexican cotton grew in popularity as the dominant species of cotton grown in the New World. Mexican cotton could be grown further inland and did not require as much water. It wasn't as high-quality, but it was profitable because the gin made it easy to clean the seeds out.

Unfortunately, cotton is also a very labor intensive crop to this day, where we have the luxury of tractors, and the spindles, headers, and accumulator of a modern cotton picker. In the early 1800s, cotton had to be tended by hand with hoes, because there was no such thing as herbicide. When it came time to pick it, it had to be picked by hand. It also required human hands to run the earliest cotton gins, which had no place to even hook up a yoke of horses or donkeys to provide power. Thus rose slavery, the greatest sin America ever committed.

Because of the need for slaves to pick cotton, racism in both the North and South developed, although slavery only remained legal in the South. The industrial North with its textile mills and factories had no need for agrarian slaves. The South, however, grew to be so dependent on the profits from its cotton that slavery continued there until the Reconstruction era, and arguably on into even the 1930s, in the form of sharecropping. Slavery (and by extension, cotton) caused South Carolina to secede from the union first, upon the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Need to produce cotton with slave labor caused the formation of the Confederate States of America, and the bloody war between North and South.

After the war, in an effort to return to normalcy, the South continued to rely on farming cotton with manual labor. But without slavery, it was forced to rely on the sharecropping system, where farmers would divide up their land and rent it to families, who worked it for them and gave the farmer a share of the profits from their crops when it came time to market them. In fact, it wasn't until the first useful cotton pickers (one that wouldn't shred the fibers) began to enter the market in the 1950s, that the sharecropping system began to be replaced with a new system, which is the system we now have today. In fact, cotton picking is the reason we have a summer break in our school system. Southern schools took a break in the summer so that children could work in the cotton fields with their parents, bringing in the harvest.

The "Rust Picker," a two row cotton picker with an open cab, manual steering, and only two row units.
Standing beside it are its inventors, John and Mack Rust.

The first cotton picker was invented by the Rust Brothers in 1936, but due to national events such as the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, their invention never saw success in the markets. In fact, the first one would not come along until 1944 with the invention of the first commercially successful cotton picker by the International Harvester company.

The first International pickers only picked one row, but could still replace as many as 40 manual laborers.

After World War II, companies began improving the Rust Bros. design, and after years and years of tweaking, modern cotton pickers now pick 6-8 rows of cotton at a time, have enclosed cabs with air conditioning, radio, and air-cushioned seats. They also have automatic steering, and tools like yield monitors and GPS. Thanks to today's technology, a single farmer can pick an entire field of cotton in only a day, depending on the size of the field. And even more recently, they have the capability to wrap cotton into round modules that can easily be moved by a simple tractor, as opposed to the use of module builders and boll buggies. This helps cut down on emissions from the burning of diesel fuel and makes the process simpler. Round modules are also more resistant to the weather.

A John Deere CP690, with round baler and six row units

Field to Shirt: How Cotton is Grown

The United States is only the third largest producer of cotton in the world, behind China and India, but it could be argued that our production system is unparalleled anywhere else in the world.

Here, cotton is planted in the spring, primarily in the south. The exact time depends on climate, rainfall, and frost risk. For example, in south Texas, cotton may be planted as early as February. In places like Missouri, it may be planted as late as June. Cotton growers use a planter with 10-24 rows, and the number of rows planted is significant because it affects how many row units are on the picker in the fall. For example, a ten row planting would be picked by a 5-row picker, and a 24-row planting would be picked by a six or eight row picker. There are exceptions, but these exceptions require additional gear, and as a result are the exception, not the norm. At seeding, a preliminary herbicide is applied to the soil to get rid of weeds and grass, because young cotton plants don't compete well with other plants until they get quite large.

Two months after planting, the first squares will begin to appear on the plants. These squares are the young flower buds of a cotton plant, and will bloom in approximately three weeks. During this time, it is important to watch for cotton boll worms, which start at the tender tops of the plants and work down, often chewing away the young, tender squares and baby leaves.

A young boll worm chowing down on a cotton square

When the flowers bloom, they start out with white petals. When they are pollinated, they begin to take on a pinkish hue, and in less than 24 hours are completely pink.

  

From left to right, notice the progression of the flower, with the middle flower already beginning to turn pink. An interesting fat about cotton is that it's nearly entirely self-pollinating, meaning it does not require an insect or bird to fertilize itself. Pollen simply falls off the anther and onto the stigma, fertilizing the plant. However, the plant still provides a source of nectar for bees and other insects, which sip it from tiny holes beneath the growing bolls. The day after pollination, the flowers begin to drop off, and leave only the young bolls, which will continue to grow and mature, until the burst open at harvest time.

In the meantime, it's important to monitor the crop to ensure pests aren't actively destroying the crop. This is done by entering the field and manually checking the percent damage. For instance, to check for worms, one starts at the top of a plant and slowly works down, looking for signs of worm damage, including gently opening young squares to check the growing bolls. For other pests such as stinkbugs, a sample boll of about 1" is squeezed open, and slices of the casing are tested for small bumps called "boll warts," and for other signs such as boll rot.

Signs of stinkbug damage

A green stinkbug poking holes in a young boll to suck out the sweet juices from the seed.

Another pest that used to be a problem was the boll weevil, but because of the Boll Weevil Eradication Program sponsored by the USDA, boll weevils aren't nearly as large of a problem, and are struggling to hang on as instances of infection have dropped astronomically.

To check an entire field for pests, a sampling is taken and a percentage calculated. For example, to scout for stinkbugs, ten bolls would be pulled from a random place in the field, with at least twenty steps from the pulling of one boll to the next. The bolls would then be opened and checked. If at least two bolls test positive for stinkbug damage, a second sampling can be taken to ensure accuracy of results. If two from the second sampling of ten test positive, the field is sprayed with insecticide to eradicate the problem, usually with a ground sprayer. However, if conditions are too wet to use a ground sprayer, spraying via airplane is also a method used.

This process continues until it's time for the cotton to be harvested. When the bolls are a week from being fully open, farmers spray a chemical on the plants to knock the leaves off in order to make harvesting the cotton easier. This process is called "defoliation" and takes an entire week from the date of application to complete. Once defoliated, cotton can be harvested, weather permitting. This is done with a cotton picker. As mentioned earlier, pickers have 6-8 row units. Each row unit contains hundreds of small, toothed objects called spindles. The spindles twirl extremely quickly within the row unit and the teeth catch on the cotton fiber. The spindles then bring the cotton fiber to the back of the row unit, where a fan blows the cotton off the spindles and into the accumulator, which holds the accumulated cotton until it's either picked up by a boll buggy and brought to a module builder, or until a picker with a round baler on the back dumps it into the baler, which wraps it and kicks the round module out the back. 

Types of Cotton

There are several different types of cotton, each with its own perks and small differences in production method. The three main types are organic, conventional, and GMO. Organic crops must follow the criteria set by the USDA (see here for more information on those guidelines). Conventional crops are non GMO, but do not meet all the criteria for organic crops. However, conventional cottonseed and organic seed varieties often overlap. If the quality of the cottonseed after harvest is good enough, gins can sell conventional cottonseed back to organic farmers, who plant these conventional seeds to raise an organic crop. This is perfectly legal according to the USDA. As a side note, this disproves the idea that contact with glyphosphate (an herbicide that is strongly opposed by the organic lobby, but that has been proven to be safe time and time again) is avoided by simply buying organic. Some cotton farmers spray conventional cotton with Roundup (which contains glyphosphate) on their crops before defoliating them in order to dry out the plant. If these seeds are sold back to organic producers, the stock seed was treated with glyphosphate, even if it's organic. 

GMO crops contain genes that make farming easier. For instance, some GMO cotton varieties contain Bt technology that keeps them from being susceptible to worms (stinkbugs, on the other hand, aren't affected by Bt technology). This natural pest resistance helps reduce insecticide application, and therefore runoff into the environment. In the cae of Roundup Ready cotton, it makes it easier for a farmer to get rid of weeds. All he or she has to do is spray their field with Roundup and the weeds die, but not the cotton.

What you should take away

Cotton farming, like any other kind of farming, is a complex process that involves a lot of moving parts. The crop also has a very rich history, and even though people may not eat it, it is still important because humans use the fiber extremely often, and the seeds are fed to animals as a protein source. Whether it's an organic, GMO, or conventional variety, you can be sure it was grown by a farmer who cares.

I'm a full-time college student at Texas A&M University, where I'm in the process of getting my Animal Science degree, with eventual aspirations to go to law school and work as a consulting lawyer for agriculture corporations. I grew up around animals, and currently manage an operation that breeds show-quality boer goats for 4H and FFA exhibitors. My family also raises commercial cattle in south Texas. I also have experience with cotton farming as an intern in South Texas.