Cotton is king in Texas

Cotton strippers are slowly working their way across fields of white, fluffy cotton on the Texas High Plains around Lubbock.  This area, affectionately known by area farmers as the “world’s largest cotton patch,” grows one third of the nation’s cotton.
It’s quite an achievement for cotton to make it to this stage of the growing cycle.  If it has survived cold, wet conditions after a mid-May planting, there’s always the possibility of damaging hail during June and July thunderstorms.  The area had a hot, dry August, with Mother Nature throwing out one more challenge—an unseasonably cool and wet fall.
Native to the Americas, this heat-loving plant requires daily heat units to fully develop.  By harvest, that’s an accumulation of between 2,000 and 2,400 heat units. As a result of the 2009 cold, wet fall, plants went into a “protection” mode and dropped their top, less mature bolls.
About a month before harvest, cotton is defoliated, either by chemicals or a timely hard freeze, allowing green lush leaves to dry and fall to the ground.
In late October, with most of the bolls open, growers head to the fields in cotton strippers.  These mammoth machines easily cost over $100,000 with GPS systems adding to the price tag.
With mornings spent on repairs and errands, harvest normally goes into full swing around noon, after morning dew or frost has dried.  And with multiple, powerful headlights, producers may run, as long as the wind doesn’t get up, until eight or nine at night.  Modern cotton strippers “strip” eight rows of cotton at a time.  Burrs, the hard husk that makes up the boll, will blow out behind the stripper, to be plowed back into the soil.
Cotton is blown into a wire storage basket.  When it fills with about two bales or 1,000 pounds of lint, the farmer in the cab will hear an alarm that signals it’s time to empty the basket.  When the stripper stops, a tractor pulling a cotton buggy maneuvers along side, and the stripper’s basket dumps its load into the buggy.
Buggies hold about 2,000 pounds of cotton.  When they are full, the driver empties them into the module builder.  About the size of a semi-truck trailer, this is where cotton is compacted with a hydraulic press. Modules hold between 10 and 12 bales of cotton.
Most area gins provide plastic tarps to cover the top one-fourth of the module.  Tied in place, the covering or “hair net” protects each module from rain, snow, and damaging high winds that precede seasonal cold fronts.
Farmers spray paint their ID number on each module. It’s common, during a productive crop year, to see between 60 and 100 rectangular white modules in a field.
After the gin is notified, a module truck arrives for a quick pick up.  The module truck backs up to the narrow end of the module, angles the flat bed to ground level, and backs up.  In less than one minute, the entire 6,000 pound module is inside the truck.  The truck bed is raised  to its original position and the driver races to make his delivery, so the process can start all over again.  Module drivers will pick up and deliver 24/7 unless rain or snow results in muddy fields.
After a field has been stripped, all that remains are naked brown stalks. After harvest, the woody stems may be shredded and plowed back into the ground.  Farmers with sandier soils that tend to blow during high winds will leave stalks to catch water, snow, and sand.
The USDA National Ag Statistics Service Texas Field Office in Austin reports the 2009 Texas Upland cotton crop is expected to total 4.9 million bales.  This is down two percent due to the cold, wet fall.  Yield is expected to average 636 pounds per acre, down 13 pounds from last month’s forecast.  3.7 million cotton acres will be harvested in 2009.