This spring has been a bit nuts. Not only have we had weird cold snaps and some pretty significant storms, but I have been traveling a lot and all of those things come together to delay my seeing those precious cotton plants getting their start this spring. But today, as I drove back to St. Louis from Memphis, I got giddy about the time I reached Clarkedale, Arkansas as I could clearly see cotton had emerged!

I did what anyone this passionate about cotton would do…. I pulled over at the next exit and grabbed my camera! I had to capture these little cotton plants who have been putting up with pretty damp, cold weather the last week — which means the plants are a bit challenged for their growth. (Yes, I know, I am SO LIKE COTTON in that I prefer warm weather and look at cold weather as something I have to survive! ).

Cotton in Arkansas

Here are some of the first pictures I snapped. You can see the soils in Clarkedale are pretty damp. The soil was pretty light but there was definitely some clay content there and those plants are pretty happy that the temps this week will be in the 80s. (I am too!)

Cotton farmers in Arkansas are like a lot farmers this year, trying hard to catch up on planting! I saw some running pretty hard two weeks ago when I drove through the area. They were burning the midnight oil planting. They have finally gotten ahead of average.

Missouri Bootheel Cotton

You’d think that would be enough but it wasn’t… further up the road I decided to hop off the highway near Steele, Missouri. The Bootheel has a great history in cotton and some really good loamy soils that were lighter than the field I stopped in earlier. You can see the field has been draining too. For the past week or so, Missouri cotton farmers have been busy too! They have gotten back up to their average too!

2014 Cotton Planting Progress in the US

Since I was posting about the fact cotton is beginning to pop through the soil surface in some parts of the Mid-South, I thought I’d include the latest USDA planting progress figures. They came out today so they are definitely timely and you can see that in the past week, cotton planters have been running full blast is quite a few states!

 Wanna Know More?

If you are checking this out and thinking you’d like to know more about my favorite fiber, check out the series of Cotton 101 posts and these other posts that are popular. And ask any questions you have and I’ll find answers if I’m not familiar with the topic!

• Cotton Plant 101: What do a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like? VIDEO
• Farmers are Planning For Cotton Harvest as They Plant Cotton
• C is for Cotton – an A to Z Series about Agriculture
• Top 10 Cotton States in Area, Production, Yield & Value
• Cotton 101: Facts about Cotton – The Crop & Products

The post Young Cotton Plants & 2014 Cotton Planting Progress to Date appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I love finding new bloggers and really love it when one of them finds me and connects! That’s what happened a few weeks ago when an Arkansas woman subscribed to my blog. I looked at her blog and thought “Wow. She seems like so many people I know!” Since then comments and emails have gone back and forth and I’m lucky enough to have my new blogging friend Lacey join my “Cotton – Fabric of Our Lives” series with today’s post.

Lacey says she was “born and raised in eastern Arkansas, agriculture is all I know. In 2006, I married an aerial applicator and we now have two beautiful children. I have recently started a blog called The Ag Wife Diaries. In this blog, I express what it is like to be a pilot’s wife and also tell some of my thoughts on life. My purpose for my blog is to connect with other women.” You can also find her blog through the Facebook page for The Ag Wife Diaries.

Talking back and forth, Lacey pointed out that she and her husband are much more connected to rice than my favorite fiber. But when I explained that my series of guest posts ranges dramatically in knowledge of cotton from shoppers to cotton farmers, she said she had a real passion for cotton and started writing….

The post The Small Joys of Cotton appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Water receding near West Memphis, AR

As I drove up to St. Louis last Sunday, I noticed some field work being done. Some planters running. My guess is the crop going in the ground was soybeans as we are getting too late for cotton and definitely too late for corn in Arkansas & West Tennessee. I noticed the sandbags that have been holding water back for more than a month seems to no longer have a job as water levels began going down.

I spent my week in St. Louis working and can’t get over the reports that were coming in from various parts of the Cotton Belt. To say it hurt my heart may sound like I’m overracting, but the photos really do lead to a physical reaction. It is clear there is the potential for a lot of loss. Of course, things can always turn around too and farmers are the optimistic kind.

windblown cotton seedlings in NE Ark

Throughout the week though, photos showed up from friends on social media.

My Twitter friend  Marshall Sigsby is a crop adjuster in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He is nice enough to keep me up to date on the cotton crop in his area with photos now and then.

This week, his first alert was with a photo by Logan Towles who scouts the crop in northeastern Arkansas. It was a really rough Monday near Leachville, Arkansas. It looks like the farmers here had gone so far as to have a wind break of wheat in the field to protect the seedlings and yet that was not enough. Logan also posted a photo (in below slide show) of the impact the weather had on a center pivot.

Marshall also posted a photo of the impact the drought was having in cotton fields in Wilson, Arkansas. The photo looks like something from National Geographic to me. This photo was posted Thursday morning:

Cotton hurting from drought in eastern Arkansas

flooded farm fields in Tennessee — heavy rainfall this week

So imagine the shock to plants and people when the next morning people, plants and animals in the region got rain Thursday night! It had been prayed for but some got more than they wanted. In fact my friends Marjory & Bob Walker  seem to have gotten more than their fields can handle just outside of Somerville, TN. On Friday the water was drowning out seedlings that were just emerged. Hopefully other areas got the right amounts of moisture because there is an expectation some of this may be lost.

We have a lot more of the season ahead of us but I have to say with the highest cotton prices of my career, I had truly hoped we would have a good production season. Instead for now I’m seeing drought in the Southeast & Texas and a combination of weather issues in the Mid-South. I hold out hope that things are going well in the Carolinas and maybe out west.

Please help! I would love to have happy cotton folks sending me some pictures! In fact, I am desperate to see them! I may even be willing to get in the car and drive to see it first-hand!

[slideshow]

The post Cotton 101: Early Season Weather Problems in Mid-South Cotton appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Courtesy of Cotton Inc

I recently saw the following headline in the Delta Farm Press:  Dell, Ark., gin celebrates one millionth bale. The article was really interesting:

“Twenty-one years ago, Clarence called me about building a gin,” said Weiner. “I can’t remember how much money we were trying to raise. But it finally took root. It’s good to see a man realize his dream. We couldn’t have done it without Clarence.”

“Our philosophy is to treat everybody the same whether he’s got 40 acres or 4,000,” said Crosskno, chairman of the board for Cotton Growers, in a 2004 article on the gin, https://deltafarmpress.com/gin-introducing-new-lint-cleaners.

via Dell, Ark., gin celebrates one millionth bale | Cotton content from Delta Farm Press.

What’s that add up to? 

So, one million bales of cotton were produced in this one rural part of Arkansas. What would that mean to a consumer?  To understand that, let’s start with what you can make from a single bale of cotton. According to the National Cotton Council, one bale of cotton can make:

• 215 Jeans
• 249 Bed Sheets
• 409 Men’s Sport Shirts
• 690 Terry Bath Towels
• 765 Men’s Dress Shirts
• 1,217 Men’s T-Shirts
• 1,256 Pillowcases
• 2,104 Boxer Shorts
• 2,419 Men’s Briefs
• 3,085 Diapers
• 4,321 Mid-Calf Socks
• 6,436 Women’s Knit Briefs
• 21,960 Women’s Handkerchiefs
• 313,600 $100 Bills*

At that rate, all the residents of New York City (est. population of 8 million based on city government figures) could trace 27 pairs of jeans to the town of Dell. Or instead, more than 2 towels for each & every resident of the United States!  Who would have thought that  a small town in rural Arkansas in just two decades could have such a big contribution to our way of life! Thinking of all the other small towns across the US makes my head spin as I think about the contributions they have made!

The post A Million Bales of Cotton Impact From One Small Town appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I just saw the 2010 remake of “True Grit.” I loved the movie! Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Haille Steinfeld were all incredible! And yes, watching one of this years hit movies, a western no less, made me get to blogging! Why? Well, if you’ve seen the movie you may be able to guess, but I’ll fess up. The movie made me wonder about a couple of things: cotton production in Yell County, Arkansas and historic prices for cotton lint. Yes, this lead (and the blog post to follow) is in large part my admission of being a total agnerd!

Cotton Production in Yell County, Arkansas

So…. let’s start with the Yell County references. The character Mattie talked about selling the cotton from her family’s Yell County farm in Little Rock, however she considered changing to a marketer in Fort Smith — both trading centers in Arkansas. In today’s world, it is hard to think of western Arkansas as part of the wild west, but of course, knowing our nation’s history, many areas were wild 200 years ago!

While I’m not intimately familiar with that area, I’ve traveled it some and can’t say that I remember cotton fields there!

I pulled up a few sets of statistics from the National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Arkansas Field Office. Based on the last few years data, I’d say that cotton is no longer grown in Yell County. There are lots of areas of the Southern US where crops have changed rather radically so it’s not surprising. Cotton areas of Arkansas tend to be closer to the Mississippi River which have flatter land and deeper topsoils.

In fact, once I was able to find county specific cropland maps like this one from 2009 (I really think this is cool), it seems clear that most of Yell County isn’t cropland at all. And I went back to a few historical records from the 1800s (including the 1840 census) and didn’t even see Yell County on the list! By 1870 it was listed in the Census but I couldn’t locate crop data. And since the movie’s website suggests it was set in the 1870s, that sounds about right!

One of the benefits of being a real agnerd is knowing some of the places and people to get in touch with when your sleuthing turns up empty!  Enter the National Cotton Council’s economist Shawn Boyd. He found the full 1870 Census which said Arkansas produced 247,968 bales of cotton that year with 3,671 of the bales coming from Yell County!

Cotton Prices in the 1870s

Trying to track down the price of cotton in the 1870s was exactly the sort of thing Shawn has helped me with previously (did I mention that the experts at the National Cotton Council rock?). I’m still not sure why I bothered cause a lunch time phone call (and likely a rather humorous voice mail to my economist friend Shawn Boyd was answered within an hour or so with the info I hadn’t been able to find!

The conversation in the movie touches briefly on the price of cotton with Mattie saying she had gotten 11 cents per pound where they sold their early crop. And the Fort Smith marketer was offering 9 cents. According to the information Shawn pulled, the average prices for cotton lint in the 1870s moved around some (see the graph of numbers below thanks to Shawn ) but 9-11 cents per pound is in the range for the late 1870s! Close enough to get Shawn to say “It seems like the book/movie was pretty accurate (especially if the movie took place in 1877, 78, or 79).  It looks like somebody did their homework when it came to the cotton prices.”

And with that, I’m going to stop my agnerd moments inspired by watching a few short minutes of “True Grit.” Sure am glad that it added up after I checked a few things out. For some reason I think I would have been totally bummed if the book or movie wasn’t well fact-checked! LOL!

The post True Grit, Cotton and Yell County, Arkansas appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Appreciate Marshall Sigsby giving me & another cotton tweep down our way — Jeremy Bullington from the University of Arkansas Extension Service a couple of harvest time shout outs. Seems like years ago we finished harvest — in record time I am happy to say!

The photo below is of photo below is a beautiful field near Rector, Arkansas. You can see yields were pretty good — just look how white the field looks where the picker is versus the part of the field to the left where the picker has already harvested the lint! I linked the photo directly to its original online post — by going there you can also see other photos Marshall’s posted.

For additional insight into cotton harvest, I have a post that shows the on-board baling moduler at work and others on the topic of cotton harvest in my Cotton 101 series.

The post Arkansas Cotton Harvest October 2010 — Friend’s Photo from Marshall Sigsby appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

It happens often. People do something so heart-warming it goes viral on the internet. This video was shared on Facebook — I saw it from a friend who lives in Denver and who I went to college with in Oklahoma. The amazing thing it

I’ve been in the small town of Manila in Arkansas — lots of cotton farmers there. And it reminds me of the heart and spirit I see so frequently from farmers without cameras turned on. Not sure if I know parents or grandparents of kids on either football team, but I think despite the score, they should all be celebrating.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_A-lgWCfog]

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