It has been a joke told for years in the cotton industry. In fact, each March (if you live in the Mid-South) and April (if you live in Texas) the giggles are heard as people who work in cotton say they are spending their weekend at the gin show. Some of our friends (and sometimes family) have a different first impression when they think of gin. Heck you may be one of those folks!

As someone who has a friend who really enjoys a good gin & tonic with a twist of lime…. I get it. The word has a different meaning all together — we think of big machines or a big building holding those machines that separate cotton lint from the seed. It’s another one of those reasons that a while back I wrote a working dictionary of cotton terms.

Really I know every industry has it’s own vocabulary but you have to admit that going to the gin show to see how much a stripper costs these days makes a person giggle, even if you know the stripper is a harvester lingo! And there have to be cotton farmers who go to the Lubbock show to at least talk about a guy about strippers.

Seriously though, cotton gins are a staple in southern communities. Gins are part of the infrastructure — remember how I did the math on the impact of one gin in jeans? They are usually owned by a group of farmers in the area. And since gins have to start processing cotton in the fall with harvest, spring is a time when the gin has usually shut down and is thinking about the

With the confusion, I decided to clear things up a bit and show you some of the things the gin show does!

• Showcase equipment for farms and gins.
• Call meetings on various technical, marketing and regulatory topics. (That sometimes will make a person want a drink no lie!)
• Gives people a chance to catch up, talk about planting plans.
• There are various cotton and cotton seed products that can be purchased, too!

Here’s my highlight reel. Hope you enjoy it.

The post A Gin Show, No Tonic or Limes — What Happens at a Cotton Gin Show appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

In October, I spent several days in Memphis. On one trip, you may remember I got stuck in the mud on a turnrow in a cotton field and I became one of the problems cotton farmers can have when it rains at harvest time! A couple of weeks later, I returned to Memphis and with really nice weather, I decided it was a weekend for me to get back out on a farm. My buddy Bob who had shown one of my city kid niece’s around and he was up to the challenge of taking on another when until he had problems with a picker. So I called Allen’s farm and asked if I could come their way, they were gracious enough to point me to a field where a picker would be rolling.

This October, it was a teenage niece. One who had only a little experience on a cotton farm and it was five years ago!! For those of you who have read my blog since the start (if anyone has stuck with me PLEASE let me know! It feels like it has been forever!) And comparing the photo we took as we headed out, I think you’ll agree that a lot has changed since the two of us went to a cotton field together.

Oh…. and yes, I think it is clear… my niece shares a passion for cotton and agriculture! Granted, she is probably a bit more reserved with her enthusiasm these days, but I loved seeing the excitement of discovery!

Five years later, having organized a bit of a visit, we had a lot more adventure to check out so I’ll be putting together several posts on our day’s adventure! Here are some of the key elements of the day that will be featured in posts are:

• Checking Out a Soybean Field
• Getting Up Close to Cotton
• Picking Cotton & Making Modules
• Riding the Tractor & Moving Round Modules
• Standing on Top of the World
• Visiting the Cotton Gin

The post Two City Girls on the Farm for a Day appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

October is devoted to raising awareness in breast cancer. We see the NFL and Delta Airlines go pink to raise awareness but what can a cotton farmer do? How can you tell when a cotton farmer is committed to something? Well, the best examples are clear to the eye! October brings harvest time and modules are a great canvas for making a statement. And it seems a lot of them have gone pink this month!

Yes, cotton farmers have been showing their support of breast cancer research. My friend Marjory caught this on a gin yard in Greenwood, Mississippi the first of October.

And then I saw Cannon & Heidi Michael from California (he’s @agleader on Twitter) popping up pink today and I couldn’t put off posting this any longer. Think about how many people can be prompted to think pink when they roll past round modules that big wrapped in pink!

And I have to share one of my favorite t-shirts. I found out about it a couple of years ago around the same time of year as a community was hosting an event to raise money for research & support.

The post Cotton Farmers are Raising Awareness in Breast Cancer appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

After writing more than 100 blog posts on cotton, it can be fun to watch posts keep showing up in my stats. There are a few posts that seem to show up frequently. They are posts that help explain things people may be interested in or that people find here or there and want to share with others. Since I moved the blog from my previous webhost (note to all – I suggest you steer clear of inmotion hosting), I think its’ really interesting to see which posts are getting the most traffic! Here are my Top 10 posts about my favorite fiber — cotton! 

Cotton 101: What does a cotton plant or field look like?

I love that my top viewed cotton post was something I put together as a response to a friend’s tweet two years ago! The friend was asking whether it was possible he was seeing cotton in the field when he was far from his Midwestern home. It was! I wrote a post including photos from planting, early season, mid-season, fruiting, harvest time and post harvest. With each photo I talk through some of the key things happening on cotton farms.

Top 10 Cotton States in Area, Production, Yield & Value

This is a newer post — written in August 2012 — and contains some key numbers about cotton by states. The data included in this post include:

• Top 10 Cotton States in Acreage / Area to Harvest in 2012
• Top 10 Cotton States in Production / Total Number of Bales in 2012
• Top 10 Cotton States Per Acre Production / Yield in Pounds Per Acre in 2012
• Value of Cotton by State

Since those are 2012 numbers, I am thinking I will do similar posts on an annual basis. I did a look forward to 2013 cotton acres a bit ago that seems to be really popular.

Cotton 101: How a Cotton Gin Works

We all learned about cotton gins and Eli Whitney in elementary school but somewhere along the way, a bunch of us have forgotten what a cotton gin is for since then. The gin is where cotton farmers take their crop to have the cotton lint separated from the seed so it can go to textile mills and become clothes, towels, etc.

What’s the Fabric of our Lives About? Why Advertise Cotton?

I love when I am watching TV and I hear someone singing “the touch the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives.” In fact I love it so much, that it is sometimes my ringtone! But what leads Hayden Pannettiere or Zoe Deschanel to sing about cotton and who pays them to do it? Seems that’s something other people have wondered before and they search Google to find out. Some of them find my blog in the process.

Why Would a Farmer Put a Sign on a Cotton, Corn or Soybean Field?

When you drive down the backroads of America, or even the interstate in rural areas, people sometimes see a sign on the edge of a farm field. Some fo us aren’t sure what those are for and some make assumptions about what they mean. But farmers do that as a sign for each other, this post helps explain all of that.

Cotton 101: Can you eat cotton or cottonseed?

People will joke about being so hungry they could eat something as unappetizing as cardboard, but could you ever eat cottonseed if you were really hungry? Its a yes and no answer that you may want to know more about before biting in.

Understanding the Boll Weevil’s Impact Looking Forward

The mean ol’ boll weevil is probably the one cotton bug that more people have heard of than any but for those of us in the US, we should know it’s not even native to the US! It came here years ago and American farmers want it to go home to Central America. Here’s what’s on the minds of those farmers as they look to the future.

Cotton 101: What’s Cottonseed Used for?

Products made with cotton fiber / lint is really well understood. Most of us have cotton sheets & towels, jeans & t-shirts, etc. But what happens to cottonseed when it leaves the cotton gin? Well there are several things.  

Cotton 101: Facts about Cotton — The Crop & Products

This is a post that provides some of the trivia — bits and pieces of things that I think are interesting about cotton. Yeah, I am a total cotton geek!

A Million Bales of Cotton Impact From One Small Town

When a cotton gin in Arkansas hit the milestone of ginning one million bales of cotton, it got me thinking about the contributions of this small town that most Americans had never heard of. How much cotton is one million bales and how many pieces of clothing would that make for folks in a big city?

What am I missing?

Looking at all of that,

The post Top 10 Blog Posts About Cotton in 2013 appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

When I was thinking about doing this, it was letters like Q, X and Z that made me wonder if I could really do it. The video I shot as I showed a friend around Memphis came to mind quickly. Although Steve had worked in cotton for years off and on, seeing how cotton was tested for quality was new for him. As he soaked up all the things that he was being told. I wandered around shooting photos and video but somehow I failed to share it.

It’s important to note that while I have never worked for the USDA classing cotton, I worked in Mississippi for a dozen years at a company that was breeding Deltapine cotton varieties for farmers and one of the important pieces of the research & development program was having a proprietary fiber testing lab.

This lab enabled us to test fiber more quickly than if it had to go into the line with all the samples going to the USDA labs. And although the lab wasn’t run by the USDA, it tested itself and submitted blind tests to the USDA for analysis to remain calibrated. This lab was one of the favorite spots on site tours. For a couple of reasons, one was seeing how this is done up close is just cool and the other was how awesomely comfortable it was with the constant temperature & humidity (something Mississippi is not known for!)

Every Bale is Sampled and Tested

Last year, US cotton farmers produced an estimated 17 million bales of cotton for use in a variety of products from jeans to dollar bills. As farmers harvest & gin that cotton, they know how much they have in approximately 480 pound bales but farmers won’t know how much their crop is worth until the lint is classified by the USDA fiber testing labs. The fiber quality testing or classification is important so that textile mills will be able to target the fiber they need for various types of textiles.

Cotton gins from across the Cotton Belt pull small samples from each bale and the barcode tag that is placed on that bale has a stub that goes with the sample to the classing office.

How the Labs Work

The classing labs bring in samples from gins in their area, bags full of samples arrive and each sample it taken out and allowed to adjust to the consistent temperature and humidity. This is really important because cotton’s elasticity and other factors can change if the cotton is wetter or drier. It works just like our t-shirts. Think about how much more a t-shirt will stretch out if you try to stretch it straight out of the shower vs how much it stretches out if you’ve been sweating in it for a while!

Cotton Quality Tests Run

Once the cotton is at the specific temperature and humidity, technicians run a variety of tests that will help cotton merchants and buyers. The parameters include:

• Length 
• Uniformity
• Micronaire
• Strength
• Color
• Trash/Foreign Matter

Questions on Fiber Quality?

R, S, T, U & the Rest of the Alphabet Coming Soon!

See the other posts in this series by clicking on the logo at right and reviewing the letters, or by browsing the A to Z ag tag archives. You should also feel free to add ideas for upcoming letters! I’m pretty pumped about getting caught back up here and getting this on its merry way!

Related articles

• How Much Cotton is in That Field or Module?
• Cotton Rally Encouraging Farmers to Sow More Than USDA Forecast – Bloomberg
• Alabama cotton producers look to improve on record-high 2012 yields
• Top Cotton Blogs You Should be Following

The post Fiber Quality Testing on Every Bale of US Cotton VIDEO appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

This fall, while in Kansas for the State of Now, I took the backroads from Hutchison toward the part of northwestern Oklahoma I called home for four years while I was in college. When I was driving through an “s” curve, I saw this sign and had to stop — yes, the cotton logo had demanded my attention! I thought I’d quickly snap a photo or two and get back on the road, but then a loaded truck came by and I realized the cotton gin was incredibly close. Just felt like I had to stop! Here are the photos I snapped and some of the things I saw that afternoon.

Driving down the road, I saw this sign & had to stop — Southern Kansas Cotton Growers Cooperative

A module truck drove by as I took the photo of the coop’s sign… I knew the gin had to be close by so I followed it! I went into the office while the driver had the module weighed in.

Self-portrait (that’s me Janice Person) at a cotton cooperative, modules in the background. It was a really windy day!

a cotton module (tightly compacted seed cotton straight from the field) enters the gin, and first step is it is pulled apart

These are the gin stands — the equipment that will separate cotton lint from cotton seeds

Closeup of the part of the gin stand that separates lint from seed — those are really small saws that pull the lint through

Cotton gin control panel

This is the bale press — the piece of equipment that compacts cotton lint into a bale for storage & transport for use in textiles

The gin’s mechanic was working on equipment and was nice enough to stop and visit for a few minutes. The coop has two gins that they alternated running this season. He keeps things in good mechanical order. Months later, I mentioned meeting him and found out that he has sent his kids to some of the most elite universities in the US based on his hard work in the cotton industry. Love that!

cotton bales ready for shipping

every bale of cotton in the US gets a permanent bale tag that stays with it from gin to fabric

Cottonseed, gin trash, etc are placed outside the gin until its sold by the truck load.

Related articles

• Eli Whitney would have been proud! – Eloy, AZ
• 2012 cotton crop remembered as record-breaking, heart-breaking
• The 12 Days of Cotton – My Christmas Homage to My Favorite Natural Fiber

The post Cotton Gin in Kansas Made Me Pump My Brakes appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Last year, was a first for me. It was the first time in decades that I hadn’t kicked off the new year of winter meetings with the Beltwide Cotton Conferences (aptly names as folks come from all over the Cotton Belt for this). The Beltwide I wrote a short post about it as it happened. And while I have to admit, I had a great distraction since I was in Hawaii for a short vacation before the Farm Bureau’s annual meeting set my winter into work gear.  I have to tell you, it was strange. Surreal even.

I have never been able to match the sense of community at Beltwide. The meeting draws in people from all seven segments of the cotton business — farmers, ginners, warehousemen, cottonseed handlers, merchants, cooperatives and merchandisers. That means everyone from the farm to the finished product comes! There are meetings for all segments in the same place.

That may sound like a huge number of people, but think about it with the numbers I’ll give you.

• Although there are about 2 million farms in the US, only 18,600 cotton farms.
• There are approximately 1,300 cotton gins.
• The cottonseed segment is people who crush cottonseed into oil or work with hulls, etc and it’s tight.
• and on and on.

In addition to all of those segments, you get all the researchers who are investigating new stuff and folks like me who work for companies involved in the cotton industry. Out of that small group a couple thousand of them will come to San Antonio. We are closer than the alumni of major universities — there are fewer people and we get together in person annually.

We’ll attend meetings that help us understand what we can learn from the problems we had this year and we will find out more about the new thing on the horizon. We will celebrate farmers who have had great accomplishments and some of us will think about friends who won’t be there. And we will eat great TexMex while talking to dear friends who we don’t get to see nearly enough. My friend Elton Robinson explains it all in his post encouraging others to “squeeze it for all its worth.”

And if all of that wasn’t enough to get me to pack my suitcase early, I get to present to a group during a workshop. It will be my first time to present at the Beltwide. Quite frankly, I’m psyched. So psyched in fact I’ve already polled folks about cotton and social media here on the blog! Here’s the way I explained it on the blog at work:

I get to leave my mark on the last of the Beltwide Production Conferences during a Tuesday afternoon workshop. I will be alongside two other social media users for “You Are Now the Media: Social Networking in Agriculture” Tuesday morning from 10:30 to noon. My presentation will focus on the use of smartphones in the quest to provide information in videos and photos.

Speaking at Beltwide makes this a first for me but one in which I expect to see familiar faces giving me that friendly smile like Mr. Ray & Ms Dorothy did decades ago. I have joked that my being allowed to present at a conference of PhDs and researchers indicates the end of the world as we know it. But in reality, this year marks the last Production Conference for the cotton industry. The other technical conferences will continue and I expect more people will be encouraged to use social media to both communicate their experiences and to learn from others. And if that’s the case, maybe my being on the agenda makes perfect sense.
via A Beltwide Cotton Conference First After Decades of Attending | Beyond the Rows

I would love to see some familiar faces there Tuesday! You coming?

Related articles

• Poll on Cotton & Social Media (I need your help please!)
• 2013 Farm Press High Cotton winners announced
• The 12 Days of Cotton – My Christmas Homage to My Favorite Natural Fiber

The post Beltwide Cotton Conferences — If you love cotton, you really need to be there! appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

aka Vocabulary the Way I’ve Heard Cotton Farmers & Other Experts Use It & How It Can Be Misunderstood

If the title and subhead don’t point out this is not an academic endeavor, then let me say it outright. THIS IS NO ACADEMIC DICTIONARY ON COTTON. This is just a simple compilation of words that we use in cotton that may make other people not in the industry shrug their shoulders and say huh? Would appreciate additions, clarifications and questions all!

Bollbuster

• What it isn’t — This was the most fun to use when I was in New York in my awesome Italian community. Depending on the accent, you could easily make it sound like ballbuster which was used a good bit of the time to refer to someone giving a guy a real hard time.
• What it is –There are crop protection products that you can use to help get the bolls on the plant that are designed to help the boll drydown and open more quickly. A real cool snap of weather can have a similar impact on a crop that has bolls drying down. There is a single harvest aid product that has this name but the reality is the slang use is the way I have always heard it.

Burr (pronouced brrrr)

Canopy

• What it isn’t –It is not the sort of tent you put up so you can relax outside for a few beers.
• What it is — It is the shading of the dirt between plants when the plants grow big enough to shade out the dirt underneath them. This is really important because that cuts the sunlight off from weeds & grasses that may want to grow…. of course if the weeds have already gotten above the crop, then they will get lots of photosynthetic energy and will keep growing.

Cut-out

• What it isn’t — I know lots of you think scissors and coupons or paper dolls with the word cut-out, that’s rarely the image I have of cotton farmers though. And if you get caught cutting up in school you are in trouble. Neither of those apply.
• What it is — In cotton, cut-out is a growth stage in the crop. And it really refers to what happens when the crop stops putting on new leaves, branches, bolls, etc. Because cotton varieties can be either determinate or indeterminate as well as range in maturities, cut-out can vary. But when your crop cuts out, you know that all the yield potential you have is already in the field. Farmers don’t want the crop to cut out until they have a good boll load, but mid season stress, particularly drought can lead to premature cut-out with small plants and very few bolls.

Fair to middlin’

• What it isn’t — Just a saying on how your day is going.
• What it is — Fair to middling was part of the grading system before it became a numerical system. The word based system included a spectrum including poor, fair, middling, good and excellent meaning

Fallout

• What it isn’t — A laughing fit that is so hard you can’t stand up!
• What it is — At harvest when cotton lint gets blown off the plant or otherwise comes off the plant. It results in farmers getting fewer pounds per acre.

Fruit

• What it isn’t — A kind of alcohol that you serve with tonic & a twist of lemon!
• What it is — A facility that separates the seed from the lint so we can turn the lint into thread & fabric as well as use seed for oil & livestock feed. You can see how a gin works in this post.

High Cotton (aka Tall Cotton in some areas)

• What it isn’t — Not just the lyrics of an Alabama song.
• What it is — A saying that speaks to a really good part of life. I even wrote a whole post on this one! High Cotton blog post

Layby

• What it isn’t — this term makes you think of a mom taking a nap alongside a newborn baby… Please do not think cotton farmers are in the habit of taking a nap between the rows if you hear this term.
• What it is — Instead, this is talking about the timing of the last weed control activity. Farmers have to keep an eye on weeds until the crop canopies over the rows. (see above for detail). At this time cotton farmers can take a bit of break on weed control which is great cause they have lots of other this to think about with the crop (insects, fruit retention, disease, etc)

Mike/Mic

• What it isn’t — Not a guy who goes by the common nickname for folks named Michael.
• What it is — A measure of fiber quality that is largely related to maturity of the fiber. My favorite way of explaining mic (short for micronaire) is to visualize cotton lint as an artery or vein because cotton puts on an external cylinder wall with very fine walls. As the fiber matures, the walls strengthen — kind of like really high cholesterol levels can do to our circulatory system. The property is measured by having a known force of air pressed over the lint. Resistance is measured so immature fiber will collapse and provide the most resistance, whereas air will pass over perfectly round ones. Mic is important as textile manufacturers look at dyeing and weaving.

Picker

• What it isn’t — Guitarists rock my world routinely and I know a couple of cotton farmers who may have musical streaks, but pickers aren’t people in the US any more except in rare research cases where people harvest individual bolls, plants, etc.
• What it is — Enormous pieces of highly complex machinery now harvest cotton crops in the US, Australia and Brazil. Pickers pull lint off the cotton plant and prep it for storage or may even take care of creating the on-board module. There are some photos and posts on the Cotton 101 page.

Square

• What it isn’t — I know that there was a time when a person would be called square, much like a nerd. Farmers and the plants they grow are rockin’, no way they could be mistaken for square. And a pinhead-square would have to be a lowblow!
• What it is — When the plant goes into fruiting mode (starts putting on blooms/flowers), the buds are very small and some folks think that the earliest part of the bud looks squared a bit cause there are generally four sides. Because the square is so small, it can be especially vulnerable to damage by insects so scouts tend to check them to make sure nothing is going to get in the way. Pinhead by the way refers to the size of the square/bud!

Stringout

Stripper

• What it isn’t — A scantilly clad woman dancing with a pole.
• What it is — A piece of harvesting equipment that is sometimes used in the High Plains of Texas. Unlike pickers, strippers pull a good bit of the plant matter into the machine when harvesting. The machine is not as complex and consequently not as expensive, but the tradeoff is found in fiber quality quite often as extra cleaning at the gin can result in reduced fiber quality.

Turnout

• What it isn’t — the folks who come for a party, a misheard lyric from DJ Snake & Lil John (Turn Down for What)
• What it is — A ratio of seed to lint that comes from the gin. Since lint is the piece that offers the greatest profit potential, farmers like to get a higher percentage of lint than seed.

The post A Working Cotton Dictionary (Words Cotton Folks Use that May Confuse Others) appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Last week I was busily going about things & checked in on Twitter and somehow, almost miraculously I caught two tweets about Tennessee cotton. It was awesome!

First came this one from Shane Kinne with the photo at right.

Touring a #cotton gin in TN. New territory for this north MO farm boy. #agchat https://t.co/cj3BoIo

— Shane Kinne (@ShaneKinne) May 9, 2011

Shane was down to learn about a cotton gin and although some may wonder what can be learned by visiting a gin in the off-season, I have to tell you it may be the only way to hear from a ginner!

In the peak part of ginning season, ginners are incredibly busy and the equipment is incredibly loud too. You can see some of what Shane saw here in a past post. 

Later, my good friend Tracey Sullivan aka @aggal77 sent:

Planting #cotton -Thinkin of MO farmers whose landscape & livelihood changed 4ever w/ flood #plant11 https://yfrog.com/h8my9lsyj

— Tracey Sullivan (@aggal77) May 10, 2011

With all the flooding we’ve had in our region, seeing a tractor pull a planter is an incredible thing! Of course now, we have degrees in the 50s and cotton likes that less than even I do! (And I’m complaining BIG TIME!)  Young cotton seedlings and I will all be excited to see warmer weather later this week. I am sure I’ll come through relatively unscathed, hope we will be able to say the same for the cotton crop!

It’s amazing how a photo (or in this case two) from friends can put a smile on my face! I may just have to do these more often!

The post Tennessee Cotton Photos from Friends 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.