Fiber Quality Testing on Every Bale of US Cotton VIDEO

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:28:49 +0000

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!

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Cotton is the Fabric of the Classroom for @HouseAgBuilt

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 16:07:57 +0000

It has been a little while since I’ve had a guest post in the series of people telling about how cotton is the fabric of their lives. This one has been in the works for a little while though and it is worth the wait. It’s from California elementary school teacher Sarah who blogs at The House That Ag Built. She has both Twitter (@houseagbuilt) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/houseagbuilt) accounts as well. Thanks Sarah for sharing your story & the story of your students!

Why I Love Cotton in the Classroom

Guest post by Sarah from The House That Ag Built for Janice the great J

As an elementary school teacher, I know the importance of teaching agriculture. Society is so far removed from agriculture that many kids and adults alike think that food is made in the store and not grown in the field. That is sad. This past school year, I made the decision to step up my agriculture education a notch (or two) and boy am I happy with the results! There are now 24 kids in my area that know more about agriculture than their parents and most adults in our area.

My first graders did a four-week agriculture unit and our focus was cotton. We learned the structure of a cotton plant, what a cotton plant needs to grow, where cotton grows in the US, what we use cotton for, and we even got to see cotton that was straight from a farmer’s field! Cotton is the perfect commodity to teach – even to such young learners! Cotton is everywhere, it literally surrounds us in the form of clothing, we use it every day in the form of money, and it is found all around our homes in the form of towels, and sheets.

It is easy for kids to make a connection with something that is all around them, both at home and at school. I LOVE cotton in the classroom! Having my students come up to me as proud as can be declaring that they are wearing cotton was so much fun! It really brought agriculture to life for my kids.

I could go on and on about all my proud moments with cotton in my classroom, but I will let my students work show just how much they retained 7 months later. I told them to write why cotton is important and here is what they did:

“I love cotton because I have my best coat and it is made out of cotton. I almost wear it every day because it is my best shirt (coat) ever in my life and I have a lot of blankets at home and cotton is important too.”

“I like cotton because it makes pillows and I play pillow fight, and (cotton) gives me socks I love to wear. And one more thing they (cotton) make me my favorite shoes.” My 6-year-old student made the connection from cotton to pillows to having a pillow fight; cotton = fun! They are so adorable!

“I love cotton because the cows eat cotton seeds and then they give milk and the milk goes to the dairy and the dairy makes ice cream! I love cotton! And I love cotton because my favorite shirt is made of cotton; my shirt is warm too. I love cotton very very very much! Thank you!” My favorite connection! It is pretty cool that they can explain how cotton and ice cream relate!

“The important (thing about cotton) is that cotton gives us pillows and I love to sleep when I am so tired and cotton is so fuzzy and cotton makes money and I love to do a pillow fight and my blanket it is so fuzzy and it is blue and even plants of cotton. I love cotton. Cotton is so important for us. I love cotton so much if we didn’t have cotton we wouldn’t have clothes and pillow fights! I love cotton so so so much.” This writing is all over the place but when she was reading it to me after, she was so excited that she knew so much about cotton products! She even remembered that money is made out of cotton.

A few of the picture my students drew on the back of their papers:

Cotton makes dollars (aka money).

Cotton makes sheets and clothes.

They even remembered how to draw a cotton plant and the boll.

As you can see cotton is lots of fun to teach in an elementary classroom. My students and I love cotton in the classroom because it is easy to relate to and creates lasting agricultural literacy.

Thank you for having me Janice!

I love it! And think its awesome how much the kids remembered from one time of year to another!

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