Last week as I was attending a conference on the technical side of blogging, a friend (Michelle Miller of TheFarmBabe.com) sent me a message since I’m her go to on all things cotton. I answered as she sent another, another and then a deluge. You would have thought she was having a bit of a personal crisis, but in fact, she was just trying to buy some new bed sheets for her home.

I think I’ve had the same overwhelming sensation the first time I went to buy some shampoo and found the one I loved had been discontinued. So I replied and kept replying. Decided it was past time for me to write a post about what I look for and what I avoid when it comes to buying sheets.

What I Look For in Sheets

I can remember a time when I bought whatever was on sale cause that’s what my budget allowed for. The sheets I had would be replaced next time I moved and I moved pretty frequently. Once I bought a home and decided to make my bedroom a bit more mine, I decided to spend money on neutral colors or higher quality sheets, pillowcases, and duvet covers.

Suddenly, all the things I had learned about cotton fiber quality and textiles was put to work (thanks Cotton Inc for all the lessons!). So here’s what I look for and why:

• Cotton — I know with a social media handle like JPlovesCOTTON, it seems obvious, but there have been times when I had some synthetic sheets. In general, the breathability of cotton is so awesome on my skin and I’ve always prefered it to be a bit cool at night. With cotton if I do get warm, it won’t make me progress to being hot! Synthetic fibers will do that.
• Pima or SuPima Cotton — It isn’t as easy to find Pima and SuPima cotton in general as I’d like, but it is amazingly smooth and stronger and finer than upland cotton. Those are all good things with sheets so I look for it. Egyptian cotton has this similar reputation and shares some of the qualities, but I like knowing I’m supporting US farmers and know first-hand how they care for the environment, etc.
• Thread counts — Thread counts can help the sheets feel smoother as well as help the wear of sheets. I have 600-800 count sheets right now. What do the numbers mean? That’s the number of threads in an inch of fabric, which also means the thread needed to be made with long, fine fibers. While it seems thread count keeps reaching new heights with the new technologies in cotton genetics, weaving and spinning, combined with Pima fibers, there tend to be points at which the costs are significantly higher. I tend to look at what makes sense to the touch and price. Some of the sheets I have now have lasted 15 years or more.
• Flannel sheets — I love flannel sheets in winter and any cool months but will confess that once the air conditioning comes on, I change out for standard percale sheets. Those are smooth woven sheets. Either way, I use the previous notes along with a good touch test to decide on what to purchase when I need new ones! Gotta tell ya, I’ve never been a fan of t-shirt / knit sheets.

What I Avoid

Since I said I’d speak to both what I seek out and avoid, I guess I committed to do this. Again, these are just my guidelines… not law of the land.

• Egyptian Cotton — A long time ago, Egyptian cotton held a special places in the heads and on the beds of lots of people that’s because there are a few different types of cotton quality and they are related to the species of cotton. At the time, Egypt grew Gossypium barbadense which is known for its extra long staple (cotton uses ELS as an abbreviation a lot) and U.S. grew Gossypium hirsutum but the reality is Americans have been growing ELS cotton since the early 1900s, starting in Arizona with the USDA and the Pima tribe of native Americans. Other ELS cottons include Pima, Egyptian/Gizas, Indian Suvin, Chinese xinjiang and  Sea Island cottons. So a current preoccupation on Egyptian cotton is due to marketing a lot like focusing on champagne when sparkling wines made in lots of countries are just as amazing! And besides, folks like my friend Cannon Michael grows Pima cotton in California (you may remember I went pheasant hunting on his farm for my birthday one year!). So I prefer to go with Pima, SuPima and now PimaCott which are US grown.[clickToTweet tweet=”I had no idea what kind of sheets to buy, Egyptian? 1200 count? ARGH! This helps” quote=”I had no idea! “]
• Microfiber — I know microfiber feels soft, but the feel to the touch is only one piece of what I look for, how well it breathes is a different feel altogether. So for me I like layers that can breathe when I’m sleeping. Polyester and other synthetic fibers are the worst on this count.

A New Brand I Keep Looking At

I love knowing I’m supporting my community and in this instance, it is a bunch of my friends who are U.S. cotton farmers! One easy way to do it is by buying Pima cotton brands, but a newer way which is really interesting to me, is buying straight from a cotton farm in Alabama selling their farm to fabric products through a company called Red Land Cotton — yep, they have red dirt in northern Alabama.

Mark Yeager and his daughter Anna Brakefield came to our office a year ago to tell us what they were doing. They found some heirloom sheets that were in a friend’s cedar chest and realized how much more substantial they felt than today’s linens. They started talking to various people in the cotton industry to figure out how to make them. And today, you can buy a set of sheets, pillowcases, even kitchen towels and napkins knowing that the cotton started on the Yeager’s farm, went through the spinning, weaving, sewing process, all in the Southeastern US. You can read all about the family, the farm, how the sheets are made and more on the Red Land Cotton blog, their Instagram and Facebook channels.

I haven’t needed to buy any new sheets in the last few months, but I have a feeling I will be considering these when I do. Again, they don’t feel the same as the ones you buy at a department store, they’ll feel more like the sheets our grandparents had.

Did I miss anything?

The post What You Should Know Before Buying Sheets appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Sometimes the questions that get asked leave me to pause and ponder. That’s exactly what happened when someone on Quora requested my answer to the question, what does cotton feel like? When I first saw it, I thought it was a bit absurd to ask. Then again, I routinely quote Cotton Inc on “the touch the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives.” So I let it bounce around in my head for a while and while I’m still not sure I gave the answer the person posing the question was looking for, I gave my answer! Am making some minor changes and posting it here in part because if you have an answer, I’d love to hear it! May even make it a guest post!

The first thing that come to mind for me is cotton feels like home. It is my go-to for comfort and I can make that work on so many levels.

The feeling of cotton can change based on the way we process it.

• For the flannel sheets that I snuggle into on a cold winter’s night, cotton feels soft and fuzzy, like it is waiting for you to come to bed when you get there and like it wants to hold onto you when the alarm buzzes.
• Cotton pjs feel like encouragement for taking a lazy Saturday after you’ve been running hard for a couple of weeks. They offer the perfect buffer between you and the sofa that’s been calling your name.
• The best pair of jeans or denim jacket feels like a friend who’s willing to help you get the job done. It is strong enough to take a beating without ripping the fabric (at least most days!) but soft enough that your body welcomes it whether you pull them on tight or baggy.
• My favorite Pima cotton v-neck t-shirt feels light and airy. It is the perfect thing for a hot day or a day when I will be running around a lot and want to still look a tiny bit more polished.

Cotton on the farm, has a different feeling all together. There are a lot of sensations.

• The plants are tender, seemingly fragile in the early part of the season. The leaves cool to the touch, even on a hot day as they turn the water the roots mine and sun shining down to photosynthesis and respiration waiting for the sun to go away.
• As you get to the middle of the season and plants have been growing strong, you realize those leaves are smooth on top, but can vary from smooth underneath to pretty hairy, something that surprises you. You see and touch delicate flowers, that dry-down faster than flowers we buy or grow to decorate our homes. So they start smooth and tender and within a couple of days, they are dry to the touch and crinkle in your hands.
• Later in the season, you can feel hard bolls on the plant, feeling fiber so tightly packed in there that the plant is ready to burst. And once it does burst, it is among the softest fibers imaginable. As you grab the open boll in your hand, it is both soft as the fiber is incredibly fine and comes from the seeds which are firm.

Not sure that is what a Quoran was looking for but it works for me!

[clickToTweet tweet=”Starting to wonder how I’d answer this question — What does cotton feel like? ” quote=”Interesting question and not sure about the answer… may have to give it some thought!”]

The post If asked, what does cotton feel like? How would you answer? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

There is nothing else like it for me….. seeing cotton fields at sunset is totally unique. The softness of the colors of the sky and the soft textures of fiber tufting out from the rough and rugged plants is captivating.

And after a decade or so of having that out my office window and on my daily drive, it is something that truly does call me home. Over the years, if you follow this blog, you have seen more than a few photos of cotton bolls and cotton pickers. Since my move to St. Louis five years ago, I have found myself stopping along the roads between here and Memphis on weekend evenings trying to capture the light.

It may surprise you though that it has been years since I took my spot in the buddy seat of a cotton picker. This year, my trip to Texas so close to cotton harvest convinced me I simply couldn’t go any longer without seeing harvest up close so I took a few days off work to my head back into my favorite crop at the most beautiful time of year.

Starting with Missouri bootheel cotton on Thursday and checking out some Mississippi crops Friday and Saturday was just what the doctor ordered!

I’ll give you a look at a few of the I snapped as I started my harvest weekend in this post and will then have several more posts to explain some of the photos and share more photos in the coming weeks!

These striking cotton harvest photos were all taken on Charles Parker’s farm in the Missouri Bootheel.  Appreciate his son-in-law Alan pointing me to the perfect field to capture the sunset!

If you have any questions after looking at these photos, please don’t hesitate to ask! I’ll be writing more!

The post Capturing the Light of Cotton Fields at Sunset — Photo Post appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

This time of year, cotton plants start holding a special kind of allure…. there are lots of beautiful blooms and farmers are getting a good feel for what harvest will bring! And aerial cotton photos especially grab my imagination!

My dear friend Marjory and her colleague Lance couldn’t stay in the office any more and they got out on  her family’s Walker Farms and started snapping photos. When I saw some of the photos, I had to ask if I could share them! She said sure and sent along a little message:

The cotton crop on Walker Farms is progressing nicely,  about ten days away from cut out.  Cut out, for those not familiar with the term, is when the plant reaches maturity (economic maturity) for most bolls not to be harmed by pests. (Editor’s note:  I included cut-out in my cotton dictionary too.)

The next step is for the plant to continue maturing, bolls will speckle, fiber matures and in approximately three – four weeks, the plant will be defoliated (leaves removed) for harvest. Currently, we are irrigating due to the lack of rain.

In-Crop Photos

Here’s a photo looking at the crop from the turnrow (the edge of the field where tractors and all turn to go down the next rows).

And then Lance moved in closer.

See how beautiful the cotton crop is when it is in bloom?

Aerial Cotton Shots

Lance also snagged some shots with a drone getting the Walkers a great set of aerial cotton shots that we had to share.

In this first one you can see how roads, trees and grassways all border the field…. and if you look closely, you can see the cars at the turn in for the field!

Taken from the other direction, you can’t help but notice how much better the crop’s color is and you see the corn field across the road to the right. And I have to say you see some uneven spots in the field where plants faced some challenges… my guess is that is where some water stood early in the season.

Don’t the photos just grab your imagination? Who wants to make a harvest trip with me in the next couple of months? Not sure what you’d be getting into? Check out these photos from cotton harvest and learn more about cotton generally.

The post Love These Aerial Cotton Photos of Tennessee’s Walker Farms appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Not sure how I lost track of this post about two cotton bolls. I started writing it in the fall when my friend Robyn of Robyn’s World first flagged me about a tweet she saw from Tara Ziegmont of Feels Like Home blog. Seems Tara had a small cotton boll from a plant her family grew and wondered what had happened.

Here’s the photo and text Tara shared:

Joe grew cotton in his #backyardgarden this year. Cool crop, though I think we may have left it on the plant too long.

A photo posted by Tara Ziegmont (@feelslikehomeblog) on Oct 25, 2015 at 2:09pm PDT

The conversation on twitter about what happened included a few thoughts about why the lint in the boll looked so hard. Was it left on the plant too long? Was there something else happening? I mentioned heat units and realized I may need more than 140 characters. Months later I’m finally writing them!

Noticing/Diagnosing the Problem

Tara said Joe had cotton in their garden — that’s a unique thing to grow in Pennsylvania! My bet is there aren’t a lot of consultants in the area and I don’t recall seeing any book on how to grow cotton in a garden since it is generally grown in larger fields. That makes troubleshooting harder than it tend to be in other crops where lots of information is available.

When Tara & Joe saw the boll, they wondered about the problems there could have been with harvest timing. When I saw the photo, I had a totally different look at it — I thought about the summer.

Comparing to Other Cotton Bolls

Tara said they had about half a dozen cotton bolls on the plant but the one in the photo was best. Having tried to grow cotton when I was in New York, I remember that feeling of success from producing a boll. I noticed it was a lot smaller than the bolls I see in cotton fields. You can see the photo she sent alongside one from a harvest time day I had.

So the boll that Tara got is a lot smaller than most cotton plants produce and if you look at it, the hard, woody parts of the boll didn’t open too well and the lint didn’t fluff out. This video from several years ago shows an agronomist comparing bolls during a rainy fall. My amateur diagnosis from afar is the boll on Tara’s plant didn’t have a chance to fully mature.

A Good Start

A long tap-root is something cotton develops, which means planting the crop in containers isn’t the best way to grow them out. Soils for cotton should be light and well-drained like silt loam. While the plants need some moisture to get started, a lot of rain on small cotton plants can cause problems. Also, to make sure plants get a good start and keep growing, they run soil samples looking for key nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

How Cotton Plants Develop

While I’d love to pretend cotton is totally different from all others, it really isn’t. It is a crop that likes heat, we’ll talk about that a bit more later though. Cotton plants can keep putting flowers and bolls on for a long time because cotton is a perennial plant, we just grow it like it is an annual.

It is really important that the plant get the right nutrition, environment, etc when flowers start growing and as they continue to mature (that’s the plants reproductive cycle as this produces seeds). This video will show you the various points in the fruiting process.

What the video doesn’t show is the seed inside the lint. See, seed is what the plant really wants to produce, so it puts energy there and then from that, is where the lint comes. So let’s look at what cotton bolls need to develop well.

Good Pollination

In the video I show the white flower, how the white flower begins to pinken up and how it became a bright pink. I have to wonder if Tara’s plant got really good pollination. Sometimes flowers don’t produce much pollen for one reason or another. Sometimes rain washes pollen away. sometimes it is so hot, the pollen doesn’t dehiss (pop open). The plant needs the pollen to get to the ovary which is at the base of the flower. You can see in the flower at left that the stamen are holding on to that pollen. Later that afternoon it should have dropped to the base of the flower.

Hot, Dry Weather

Cotton is a Southern crop in large part cause it needs lots of heat and sun. In fact, there is a way of calculating heat cotton plants need (DD60s — degree days based on 60 as a minimum).

The extension service provides the how to calculate DD60s as a mathematical equation:

((Max temp + Min temp)/2)-60

Example: A day with a high of 90 and a low of 60 would accumulate 15 DD60’s. You add up daily DD60s to determine the heat unit (DD60) accumulation for a given period of time.

The plants need 130-160 days and 2200-2600 DD60s to produce cotton bolls. You can see where your plant is in the growth and development cycle and those all match up to the photos of what a cotton plant looks like.

The seed and lint inside the boll mature and will work like Jiffy Pop popcorn in that foil package. It puts pressure on the boll walls, which begin to dry down. If you look at the video, cotton bolls go from green to a burgundy when it starts drying down then it cracks open and as it continues to dry, it will continue to open up. If everything goes perfectly, you have a bunch of bolls that look like this.

My Diagnosis

So, with all of that said, I think the photo Tara had shows a few things…. 1) that pollination may not have been complete, leaving the boll somewhat hollow, 2) the fiber in the boll didn’t have a chance to fully mature due to either nutrition or heat deficiencies. After checking with several others, there seems to be a consensus that those may have been the primary factors but of course it’s much easier to diagnose knowing more details!

Hope this Helps!

Not sure this is exactly what may help Tara & Joe figure out what happened to their cotton bolls, but hopefully it will help them this summer if they try again. If there are more questions, feel free to leave a comment so I can pull together a followup if there are enough questions.

The post Cotton Bolls — What makes this one so small? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Communities of builders. They are everywhere. People who are looking to make themselves, their families and their communities better. People who put out a hand or knee to help others climb up whether that means pulling someone’s weight or providing a platform for others to grow from.
I have been lucky to have lots of those builders in my personal and professional lives… and those lives are so intermingled that I have a lot of trouble distinguishing the two. And the builders who have helped, usually have been or become friends and mentors.

While I have lots of examples of people who selflessly helped me improve myself, the one that comes to mind so clearly this week is Louisiana’s Dorothy Young. I’ve written about Mrs. Dorothy and her husband Mr. Ray before but I am not sure I drove it home why she’s such a driving force in my life (and no doubt the lives of countless others).

The first on-farm visit I ever did was to the Young’s to hear what they had been doing. We had a great day with Mr. Ray (her dear husband) showing me around for a couple of hours. Me absorbing everything I could! And ended with lunch at home as Mr. Ray fixed the meal for all of us and Mrs. Dorothy came home from work.

Great visit that really helped me get on a good start of getting to know farmers, their families and communities. But it was almost a year later (my first Beltwide Cotton Conference) as memory serves when I really found out how incredible Mrs. Dorothy was.

It was my first big conference for work. There were at least half a dozen talks at any time and thousands of people rushing to the places they needed to be. I still remember feeling lost and vulnerable and wondering whether I would find my footing. Even writing that now, my eyes get misty and I picture this great light & feeling I could do it… the source you probably guessed was Mrs. Dorothy. She helped me get a strong foundation to build from in an industry I ended up calling home years later.

She helped me overcome that lack of confidence by introducing me to the many people she knew. She talked about what a great visit on the farm we had had, the nice article I had written and more. She even told them that she knew I’d need to do more of that and she knew they’d return my calls. I will never know how much of the early work I did could be attributed to Mrs Dorothy but even decades later, she can and does open doors for me when I see her. I just hope I live up to that confidence and that my paying it forward has half the impact on someone she had on me.

I’m not naive. The demolition teams or destroyers are out there too. They leave one hell of an impression or a path of destruction as the case my be. We’ve all seen them rip through our lives. And I have to say with some regret, that there have been a few times when I was more of this than I’d like to admit.

When I look around me now, I see incredible people who are busy building their lives but never so busy they can’t help build others. I’ve always had some of those people in my world but I can also remember times where I had people who looked at things far differently around me. It was hard to think of at the time, and really hard to do, but people I thought of as friends had slowly taken me down a spiral.

I remember stopping and thinking about what was happening, what, if anything I could do about it and when I compared how that impacted me versus other people, I made a conscious choice to seek the company of builders and limit my interactions with destroyers. Admittedly, I have had moments where I may have taken a metaphorical sledgehammer to a wall but I hope those abrupt renovations are rarer each year. I’ve learned I can take a more gentle approach to renovating and I’ll probably create a helluva lot less dust!

I try to make those positive choices far more frequently than the other choices I’m given. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when I see a sledgehammer raised and yet, if I see the weight bearing walls crumbling, I don’t stay for the final implosion. I don’t want to be in the crowd watching the destruction, instead I love that I have communities who will be looking for vacant lots that will be just right for a new project…. and there is always an extra hammer around if you want to help with a 2×4 or two.

Who’s someone who really helped build you up?

The post Looking for Builders instead of Demolition Teams  appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I have always had a passion for denim. I can still remember my first pair of Toughskins — they were green with those reinforced knees. I wanted to wear them a lot more often than the hand-me-downs I would get from my sister.

Through the junior high and high school years, jeans played a big part in every day life. Levi’s were the base for most of us but I can still remember Lee, Gloria Vanderbilt and Calvin Klein jeans all. It wasn’t til college that I was introduced to Wranglers and the farmers and ranchers that preferred them.

There were quite a few years where I couldn’t wear jeans to work and with a tiny apartment in NY, my closet was cut back. Eventually though, I got back to a culture where jeans were a regular part of the wardrobe again. More of them offered a bit of spandex to keep their shape. I bought a lot of jeans online and somewhere along the line, jeans started being as I started making a bit more money I started buying “nicer” brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren that I found were long enough for me.

A few years ago though Lee Jeans got my attention. They shared a cotton bale & asked a trivia question on their Facebook page and several friends tagged me to be sure I’d see it. I thought it was cool and shared a post about it. I already had a post that said you can make 215 pairs of jeans from a bale, according to the National Cotton Council. Someone from Lee commented saying thanks and offering me a thank you gift which I was happy to accept!

Can you see how Lee started winning?

They said I could just pick out a pair & tell them my size. I really wasn’t sure on sizing, etc but when I saw they listed talls on the site, I was hopeful and checked out the charts. The jeans I ordered fit perfectly! I was hooked and found myself buying another pair now and then over the years, trying different cuts and washes.

This year when I went to Dad 2.0 Summit with work, I was intrigued to see Lee Jeans among the sponsors and when I got there, was pumped to find out they set up a Dad 2.0 Denim Shop.

a selfie from Dad 2.0

I wandered in assuming I’d simply tell them about the interaction years ago and how I found I liked their products — afterall, I am long past wearing guys clothes. It was fun seeing the dads come in, get suggestions on new styles or colors, etc. But Lee’s team had their stuff together and actually had a small number of women’s jeans and denim jackets too!

You have to admit…. that new denim jacket I left with looked good too!

As mentioned above, I  have received a free pair of jeans and jacket from Lee over the years. They never asked me to write about it but I wanted to anyway, so I’m just sharing my personal thoughts. Lots of companies get lots of complaints posted online so I wanted to post happy thoughts about one. 

The post How Lee Jeans Won My Heart & Hips appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Recently I saw one of those questions pop up on Quora that made me stop in my tracks as I thought about the various things I had learned from cotton breeders and other experts over the years. The question “How has cotton been genetically modified?” already had two short answers but I knew I would go on at length. Part of the reason is that people in agriculture (particularly scientists) tend to answer very differently than other people so I will try to answer so it works across both groups.

My Definition of Genetically Modified Cotton

In today’s general use of the word, genetically modified typically refers to the traits derived through biotechnology — finding genes that don’t currently exist in cotton but offer a lot of value to be in there. For many of us in agriculture, we think of the broader efforts which include breeding through Mendelian techniques. The sort of thing that breeders have been doing for centuries. I’d like to start with the breeding sort of advancement because that’s the continuum that people like me who have been in the cotton industry for decades think of it as (I currently work at Monsanto and previously was with Delta and Pine Land Company which started its cotton breeding program in 1915). But I will cover genetically engineered too — aka GMOs in the popular sense. I have to say, I go with the popular definition these days. (Some of you may want to read my post about GMOs and the farmers who plant them.)

A lot of this comes from various conversations with different cotton breeders over time, rather than formal research on it myself.

From Wild to Domesticated Cottons

Cotton grows wildly in tropical areas of the world. People discovered it and started finding uses for it forever ago. Wild cottons focus on two things — the individual plants survival and propagation of other plants.

So if you think about that, people have selected for plants that do a few things.  Early on, people started finding cotton plants that had more lint on the boll. Those seeds were planted because people were interested in more fiber to make fabric. Some of the lint would be longer, stronger, etc too so those started being prized because it is easier to spin into yarn for fabric.

But perhaps the biggest change came from getting cotton plants to produce significant numbers of bolls in a single growing season so that cotton, though it is a perennial plant can be planted and harvested as an annual. So the push to find earlier maturing varieties, ways to get more fruit to set, etc.

The other characteristics that have been found native to cotton that are really prized are various disease resistances, the difference in leaf hairiness (think about the fuzz on a peach, if that is on the cotton plant it could easily mix in with cotton lint and make the lint more trashy/less valuable. A lot of of these modifications came from people wanting to grow cotton in areas it wasn’t native to, so what challenges did these new areas have that cotton needed to be modified to stand?

Recently breeding efforts have also improved the ability of the  plant to sustain during periods of drought and in spite of wind storms will remain attached to the plant rather than blow away, something that has become more important as weather gets more volatile.

There was a herbicide tolerance trait called BXN that Rhone Poulenc discovered and it offered resistance to a herbicide called Buctril which was pretty good at controlling broad leaf weeds (it is easier to control grasses in cotton since grasses are so different from the crop but broadleaf weeds are tougher, corn is the opposite.) That was in the market in the mid 1990s.

GMO Cotton

On the biotech side, genetically engineered or genetically modified cotton in the popular sense, modifications have been done for the past few decades and have tended to focus on the two biggest challenges farmers face in production — controlling weeds and controlling insects — both of which can have important yield impacts. As I said above, broadleaf weeds are a bigger pest in cotton than grasses. Although boll weevils are the most widely known insect that impacts cotton. But worms are incredibly damaging and it stands to reason insects would present a higher stress on cotton than some crops since cotton tends to be grown in warmer areas that don’t have harsh winters to aid in insect control. Here’s a good list of the GMOs approved in cotton — you’ll see there are several companies and organizations involved in cotton GMOs including my employer (but this post is based on my experience over my career working in cotton not just at this job).

There are also efforts underway in several other areas of biotechnology including limiting the amount of gossypol (a naturally occuring substance that is toxic to humans and some animals). That work is underway at Texas A&M University by Dr. Rathore. At Monsanto, a novel trait we are working on is lygus resistance. Lygus is another insect pest but unlike works which are currently controlled by a number of traits, lygus pierces the plant to remove sugars rather than munching on the leaves, etc like worms. Because biotech traits are so specific in the way they work, different traits are needed for lygus.

The post How has cotton been genetically modified? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

When you look at cotton overall, the crop can be improved in a variety of ways. For some, adding irrigation to their crop production would be an improvement while others may find that being able to move from hand labor to mechanical labor is an improvement.

Another way to improve cotton production is to look for new cotton varieties — that would be the types of cotton seed people plant. Right now, if you look at the company I work for, Monsanto, which has a brand of cotton seed called Deltapine, we have plant breeders who focus on that type of improvement as do several other companies like Dow & Bayer. You also have public breeding programs within the university extension programs at places like Texas A&M and Louisiana State.

These plant breeders look at all the cotton varieties that are commercially sold around the US and those that grow natively around the world and think “what can we do to make a better cotton plant?” Then they work with all the varieties to help make pairings that may result in new combinations. Maybe the new combination they are looking for has better lint yield so the farmer harvests more cotton, maybe they want to make a current variety less susceptible to a disease that bugs bring into the field, or maybe they are looking to improve the quality of the cotton harvested so the fiber is longer and stronger which makes a better yarn.

All of these things are looked at scientifically, with detailed ratings systems that are used plant by plant. Any of those things would improve cotton varieties and be done through breeding & variety improvement.

Here is a video my office put together that explains some of the pepper variety development programs we have, the concept is the same for other crops, just different characteristics.

Thanks Larry

Writing about cotton genetics was a really good way for me to reflect on conversations I had with one of the cotton breeders I worked with at Deltapine what seems like forever ago. Larry Burdett had an incredible passion for the topic, he was an avid reader and loved the history of the crop, going so far as planting really old varieties of seed just to see it for himself — his nursery was the only place I’ve ever seen Sea Island cotton.

Sadly we are mourning his passing right now. But at least I feel I am smarter about cotton thanks to all my conversations in Arizona fields with him. This photo of him is from a morning in the field where he helped me understand his rating system for leaf smoothness / hairiness. You can see, he’s pulled a leaf off of the plant and is looking at the underside of the leaf. leaf hairs are interesting because they can present problems of contamination at times. How smooth or hairy a leaf is also has implications for how much some bugs will like the plant! Such seemingly little things make a big difference in cotton!

(Part of this answer was drafted in response to the question What is cotton variety improvement (in simpleton explanation)? being asked on Quora. Like everything on my blog, I wrote this out of personal interest, not any business reason for my employer.) 

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(Editor’s note:  This post will be updated annually in mid January with the most recent year’s production numbers.)

When you are really close to something, you sometimes forget that other people will find things you know somewhat automatically of interest. That’s the case with a couple of posts I’ve written over the past couple of years talking about the leading states. People seem to love to know where the most cotton is grown in the U.S. and today (Monday, January 12, 2015) was the day of the year that the USDA sheds more light about the past season! So…. guess how I’m spending my evening!

The USDA Crop Production 2014 Summary gives a lot of information and it will be poured over by lots of economists, media and more. This is my initial take on things related to my favorite fiber.

The Overview of 2014 Cotton

The Annual Production report always opens with quick overviews of each of several key crops. Cotton is one of the most important crops in the U.S. so it is always included in the summary. As I read it, I have to giggle how some of it seems to be a bit boring.

All cotton production is estimated at 16.1 million 480-pound bales, up 1 percent from last month and up 25 percent from 2013. The United States yield is estimated at 795 pounds per acre, up 22 pounds from the December forecast but down 26 pounds from last year. Harvested area, at 9.71 million acres, is down 2 percent from last month but up 29 percent from last year.

If I was to have written the same overview, it would have a lot more “color.” Aw heck, let me go ahead and write one with the same information!

Wow! 2014 was a better year in cotton than we expected! Farmers produced more than 16 million bales of the natural fiber which is a little more than we expected last month and is up 25 percent from last year. When you look at the average yield, how much each farm produced on average, it was almost 800 pounds per acre. Again, we had low-balled it in December — by 22 pounds! Despite that gain, it is still down 26 pounds per acre. The acres harvested were up almost a third from 2013, clocking in at 9.71 million acres of cotton.

How many acres of cotton are grown in each state?

Cotton is definitely a Southern crop and the list of states growing my beloved fiber are mostly places where people who like warm weather feel most at home. Yes, cotton AND Janice love the sun & heat! There is one state that has amazingly large acres devoted to the fluffy fiber! Everything’s bigger in Texas and that is certainly the case when you look at the thousands of acres planted. Texans planted more than 6.2 million acres of cotton in 2014! Georgia was a distant 1.3 million!

1. Texas:  6,217
2. Georgia:  1,380
3. North Carolina:  465
4. Mississippi:  425
5. Alabama:  350
6. Arkansas:  335
7. South Carolina:  280
8. Tennessee:  275
9. Missouri:  250
10. Oklahoma:  240
11. California:  212
12. Louisiana:  170
13. Arizona:  165
14. Florida:  107
15. Virginia:  87
16. New Mexico:  48
17. Kansas:  31

How much cotton is grown per acre?

It is interesting to me that cotton production varies so widely when it comes to how many pounds or bales are grown per acre! I You can see that California and Arizona have much higher production numbers per acre than Texas and Oklahoma in the chart below. Of course, the costs of production differ widely too!

Remember as you look at these numbers in pounds per acre than a bale of cotton weighs approximately 480 pounds… so while Texas and Oklahoma are only a little bit over a bale on average, California and Arizona were in the three bales to the acre zone! I sorted based on yield per acre.

1. California                 1,726
2. Arizona                     1,453
3. Virginia                    1,239
4. Arkansas                  1,193
5. Mississippi              1,183
6. Louisiana                 1,171
7. Missouri                   1,117
8. North Carolina       1,049
9. Florida                        914
10. Alabama                     910
11. South Carolina         898
12. New Mexico              878
13. Georgia                      876
14. Tennessee                 875
15. Kansas                       861
16. Texas                         581
17. Oklahoma                 578

Which states grew more cotton this year? Which grew less?

Looking through the numbers in the overview, I had to wonder, where the extra cotton came from this year. One way to look at that is to check and see which states had higher production per acre this year. I mean, every year some states do better than the year before and every year is seems a few fall on bad luck. So where did farmers grow more pounds of cotton per acre? Well, Virginia farmers definitely noticed the increase pounds in 2014 and the Southwest had a tough time.

1. Virginia:  298
2. Florida:  253
3. North Carolina:  250
4. South Carolina:  207
5. Missouri:  149
6. Alabama:  121
7. Kansas:  104
8. California:  98
9. Arkansas:  60
10. Georgia:  45
11. Tennessee:  22
12. Arizona:  8
13. Oklahoma:  -13
14. Mississippi:  -20
15. New Mexico:  -43
16. Louisiana:  -52
17. Texas:  -65

How many bales of cotton did each state produce?

When you look state to state, the yield per acre and the overall number of acres comes together to provide a look at how many bales of cotton each state produced…. but I have to say the acres grown really seems to catapult Texas to the top! The numbers are thousands of bales so Texas produced more than 6 million bales of cotton in 2014! That’s a lot of blue jeans!

• Alabama:  660 (+70)
• Arizona:  492 (+8.8)
• Arkansas:  820 (+100)
• California:  755 (-188)
• Florida:  200 (+25)
• Georgia:  2,500 (+180)
• Kansas:  52 (+11)
• Louisiana:  410 (+84)
• Mississippi:  1,035 (+316)
• Missouri:  570 (+74)
• New Mexico:  73 (+7)
• North Carolina:  1,005 (+239)
• Oklahoma:  265 (+111)
• South Carolina:  520 (+160)
• Tennessee:  492 (+78)
• Texas:  6,013 (+1,828)
• Virginia:  222 (+71)

More on Cotton

If you are interested in reading more about how cotton farmers produce this awesome fiber that becomes our favorite jeans and hoodies, check out my cotton 101 page where I have highlighted some of the many posts about cotton on the site! And you can always give me ideas for more pieces to write here in the comments section!

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