Young Cotton Plants & 2014 Cotton Planting Progress to Date

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Tue, 20 May 2014 03:32:00 +0000

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!

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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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