Cotton production in the United States

Native Americans were observed growing cotton by the Coronado expedition in the early 1540s.[7] This also ushered the slave trade to meet the growing need for labour to grow cotton, a labor-intensive crop and a cash crop of immense economic worth. As the chief crop, the southern part of United States prospered thanks to its slavery-dependent economy. Over the centuries, cotton became a staple crop in American agriculture. The cotton farming also subsidized in the country by U.S. government, as a trade policy, specifically to the “corporate agribusiness” almost ruined the economy of people in many underdeveloped countries such as Mali and many other developing countries (in view of low profits in the light of stiff competition from the United States, the workers could hardly make both ends meet to survive with cotton sales).[3]

Black cotton farming family

Black cotton workers, 1886

Cotton has been planted and cultured in the United States since before the American Revolution, especially in South Carolina. It expanded to the west very dramatically after 1800—all the way to Texas—thanks to the cotton gin.[8] Plantation owners brought mass supplies of labor (slaves) from Africa and the Caribbean to hoe and harvest the crop.[9] Prior to the U.S. Civil War, cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. It was by far the nation's main export, providing the basis for the rapidly growing cotton textile industry in Britain and France, as well as the Northeastern United States.[10]

After the Civil War, cotton production expanded to small farms, operated by white and black tenant farmers and sharecroppers.[11] The quantity exported held steady, at 3,000,000 bales, but prices on the world market fell.[12] Although there was some work involved in planting the seeds, and cultivating or holding out the weeds, the critical labor input for cotton was in the picking. How much a cotton operation could produce depended on how many hands (men women and children) were available. Finally in the 1950s, new mechanical harvesters allowed a handful of workers to pick as much as 100 had done before. The result was a large-scale exodus of the white and black cotton farmers from the south. By the 1970s, most cotton was grown in large automated farms in the Southwest.[13][14]

The United States, observed in 1940 that "many thousands of black cotton farmers each year now go to the polls, stand in line with their white neighbors, and mark their ballots independently without protest or intimidation, in order to determine government policy toward cotton production control."[15] However, discrimination towards blacks continued as it did in the rest of society, and isolated incidents often broke out. On September 25, 1961, Herbert Lee, a black cotton farmer and voter-registration organizer, was shot in the head and killed by white state legislator E. H. Hurst in Liberty, Mississippi.[16] Yet the cotton industry continued to be very important for blacks in the southern United States, much more so than for whites. By the late 1920s around two-thirds of all African-American tenants and almost three-fourths of the croppers worked on cotton farms.[17] Three out of four black farm operators earned at least 40% of their income from cotton farming during this period.[17] Studies conducted during the same period indicated that two in three black women from black landowning families were involved in cotton farming.[18]

The introduction of modern textile machinery such as the spinning jenny, power loom, and cotton gin brought in more profits, and cotton towns, “more benign than the British” came to be established in the country. Following the end of slavery in the southern states the boll weevil, a pest from Mexico, began to spread across the United States, affecting yields drastically as it moved east. The fashion cloth of the blue jeans furthered boom of cotton for three decades. Adoption of chemical pesticides to reduce diseases and thus increase yield of the crop further boosted production. Further innovations in the form of genetic engineering and of nanotechnology are an encouraging development for the growth of cotton.[3]

Left: Cotton farming in Mississippi using Parchman prison convicts (1911).
Right: Cotton field ready for harvest in West Texas (2007).

Farm Worker in East Texas Cotton Field -- 1940s

The average production of lint per acre in 1914 was estimated by the United States Department of Agriculture to be 209 pounds, a nominal change from 1911 when it was 208 pounds. In the early 1910s, the average yield per acre varied between states: North Carolina (290 pounds), Missouri (279 pounds), South Carolina (255 pounds), Georgia (239 pounds); the yield in California (500 pounds) was attributed to growth on irrigated land.[19] By 1929, the cotton ranches of California were the largest in the US (by acreage, production, and number of employees).[20] By the 1950s, after many years of development, the mechanical cotton picker had become effective enough to be commercially viable, and it quickly gained appeal and affordability throughout the U.S. cotton growing area.[21]

The cotton industry in the United States hit a crisis in the early 1920s. Cotton and tobacco prices collapsed in 1920 following overproduction and the boll weevil pest wiped out the sea island cotton crop in 1921. Annual production slumped from 1,365,000 bales in the 1910s to 801,000 in the 1920s.[22] In South Carolina, Williamsburg County production fell from 37,000 bales in 1920 to 2,700 bales in 1922 and one farmer in McCormick County produced 65 bales in 1921 and just 6 in 1922.[22] As a result of the devastating harvest of 1922, some 50,000 black cotton workers left South Carolina, and by the 1930s the state population had declined some 15%, largely due to cotton stagnation.[22] Although the industry was badly affected by falling prices and pests in the early 1920s, the main reason is undoubtedly the mechanization of agriculture in explaining why many blacks moved to northern American cities in the 1940s and 1950s during the "Great Migration" as mechanization of agriculture was introduced, leaving many unemployed.[6] The Hopson Planting Company produced the first crop of cotton to be entirely planted, harvested, and baled by machinery in 1944.[6]

In 2012, production totaled 17.3 million bales, with 12.3 million acres planted. The average price was $0.71 per pound with a crop value of $5.97 billion.[23] A report published in May 2012 by the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service ranked the highest cotton-producing states as Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, Missouri, Alabama, California, South Carolina, and Louisiana.[24]

Texas produces more cotton than any other state in the United States.[28] With eight production regions around Texas, and only four geographic regions, it is the state's leading cash crop. Texas produces approximately 25% of the country's cotton crop on more than 6 million acres, the equivalent of over 9,000 square miles (23,000 km²) of cotton fields.[29] Texas Cotton Producers includes nine certified cotton grower organizations; it addresses national and statewide cotton grower issues, such as the national farm bill and environmental legislation.[30]

Loading cotton module in California (2002)

Cotton was grown in Mexican California. It became a major crop in the 1930s.[31] California’s cotton is mostly grown in seven counties within the San Joaquin Valley, though Imperial Valley and Palo Verde Valley also have acres planted. In the 1990s cotton was also planted in the Sacramento Valley. California is the largest producer of Pima cotton in the United States. The California cotton industry provides more than 20,000 jobs in the state and generates revenues in excess of $3.5 billion annually.[32]

In the late 19th and early 20th century, federal agricultural engineers worked in the Arizona Territory on an experimental farm in Sacaton. It was here that Pima Indians cultivated various cotton hybrids seeking ideal traits. By the early 1900s, the botanist Thomas Henry Kearney (1874–1956) created a long staple cotton which was named Pima after the Indians who grew it. In 1910, it was released into the marketplace. While in 1987, Arizona was producing 66% of the country’s Pima cotton, it has dropped to only 2% in recent years.[33]

Cotton harvester in Mississippi (2007)

From 1817, when it became a state, to 1860 Mississippi was the largest cotton-producing state in the United States.[34] Cotton is a major crop in Mississippi with approximately 1.1 million acres planted each year. The highest acreage recorded was in 1930 (4.163 million acres); the highest production year was 1937 (2.692 million bales produced over 3.421 million acres); the highest cotton yields were in 2004 (1034 pounds of lint produced per acre).[35]

The industry faces challenges from increases in cotton production elsewhere where US cotton exports had gone and shifts to less expensive synthetic fibers, such as polyesters.

From 2012-2016, Missouri was ranked eighth in cotton production in the United States with the average production value of $191,004,400. Missouri soil allows for the growth of upland cotton with the average bale weighing approximately five hundred pounds. The cottonseed from Missouri cotton production is used as livestock feed. According to the University of Missouri, cotton production per acreage in this state peaked in the 1953 and decreased to its lowest point in 1967. In terms of yield, Missouri yielded a record low of 281 pounds/acre in 1957 and a record high of 1,097 pounds/acre in 2015.[36]

The top four upland cotton producing counties in Missouri are New Madrid (197,000 bales in 2016), Dunklin (171,200 bales in 2016), Stoddard (110,000 bales in 2016), and Pemiscot (72,000 bales in 2016). Other combined counties in Missouri produced 15,800 bales in 2016.[37] In 2017, total Missouri cottonseed sales were 179,000 tons.[38] Missouri upland cotton production in 2017 was valued at $261,348,000 with 750,000,480 pound bales produced in that year. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, upland cotton in Missouri was valued at 0.751 $ / pound in 2017. Cottonseed production was less valuable that year in terms of dollar value, with a total production being 255,000 tons valued at $39,824,000 ($152/ton).[39]

Missouri grows upland cotton, and cottonseed, which is a valuable livestock feed.[40][41][42][43]

Cotton growing is confined to the westernmost tip of the state; over 50% of the Santa Rosa County's harvest is of cotton.