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We have just finished harvesting cotton for the year, & most field work is now focused on killing last year’s plants (cotton is actually a perennial). Here is myself driving a cotton picker. They harvest 6 rows at a time, with row spacing between 30”-40”.
How a picker works: Each 1 of these spinning spikes is a spindle. The spindles spin, & each bar of spindles rotates in sync with the forward speed of the picker. The spindles strike the cotton bolls, wrap the cotton fiber around the spindles, & pull the cotton from the plant.
Here are the spindles again & up close:
The spindles bring the cotton around to the side of the machine, where doffers (yellow discs) are spinning the opposite direction. They rake the cotton off the spindles & it falls into a compartment where it is then vacuumed up into the baler apparatus:
Here, you can see the front & rear spindles/doffers (each row has a front & rear set). Towards the end, you can also see the hole where the cotton is blown up into the chute and into the baler.
A cotton picker costs $700-800K, & unlike a combine that can harvest any grain, it only harvest 1 crop: cotton.
Here is a field of cotton after harvest. Unlike with a combine, the plants are not “cut” at any point. The cotton is simply “pulled” from the standing stalks.
At this point, we call the harvested cotton “seed cotton”, b/c it contains about 40% fiber (“lint”) & 60% seed. What you would recognize as “cotton” is actually hair that grows from each seed. (Think about the “fuzz” that grows from a dandelion seed).
The bales of seed cotton are staged in groups of 4 (the length of a truck), & await pickup and transport to a gin for processing (where the lint is seperated from the seed):
There are 7 gins in our county. After ginning, the cotton is again baled into square, 480 lb bales & sent to a warehouse. Cotton is sold heavily on quality, so it may set in a warehouse for an indefinite time waiting for a cotton merchant to purchase them.
Half of our cotton will wind up in China.
Cotton is a crop that can receive heavy premiums/discounts due to quality. Some things measured are: fiber length, fiber strength, micronaire (fiber diameter), brilliance of the white color, leaf contamination, uniformity of fibers within a bale, etc.
A little tangent: Here is a cotton boll ripening & opening to expose the fibers. Cotton bolls will usually start opening (here) around the latter part of July.
When 50-80% of the bolls are open (depending on variety), we will spray a defoliant. It must be timed perfectly. Too early= you will lose yield, too late= your micronaire (fiber diameter) will be too large & cause your cotton to be sold @ a discount.
https://twitter.com/horned_ranch/status/1164216148038213632/video/1
https://twitter.com/horned_ranch/status/1164216148038213632/video/1
this is an 8 day time lapse video of a field after defoliation.
The power of mechanization: In 1930, an experienced cotton picker could pick 250 lbs of seed cotton per day.
Today, 1 man on 1 machine will easily pick 300,000=the same amount of as 1,200 people.
Today, 1 man on 1 machine will easily pick 300,000=the same amount of as 1,200 people.
Deere company is also researching to make the machine autonomous (with no driver needed)-finally adding the final “1” to the 1199 human pickers already eliminated.
Why are some bales wrapped in yellow, while others are pink?
(Story from Brownsville Herald)
(Story from Brownsville Herald)
Cotton is the only major commodity crop with complete traceability throughout the supply channel. Each bale contains a unique RFID that records grower, Farm, field, GPS location, & other data that is uploaded & stored to the “cloud”. Photos: Deere
This barcode can link all the data points from a finished bale in a foreign textile mill (ready to be made into yarn), a quality sample sent to the USDA lab, & a raw seed cotton bale. Here is a video about the system (scroll to the bottom): https://www.cottoninc.com/cotton-production/ag-resources/harvest-systems/rfid-tracking/
Each one of these round bales contain enough cotton to make 5,100 T-shirts! Non-irrigated cotton fields will produce around 2,000 T-shirts per acre, while irrigated fields can produce up to 7,200 T-shirts per acre! (An acre=about the size of a football field).
