The Fabric of Our Lives

On the way home from Professional Saturday, Ashley and I stopped so that I could pick a ball of cotton. The cotton is in bloom and it is starting to be harvested. I've heard that this can go on until early November. Driving along Route 1 between Clarksdale and Helena, all of the harvesting stages present themselves, one after another: a verdant field, lush and green, where the cotton has not yet fully bloomed; then a mosaic of green and white, cotton plants full of white balls of fluff; then a wintery-looking field, already crop-dusted with defoliator, rows of brown stalks and lumps of white cotton like patches of snow caught in branches; and finally a razed, dry, brown field.

A Cotton Field in Bloom (click to see big picture)

According to the National Cotton Council, Mississippi typically plants a little over a million acres of cotton per year and harvests a little under two million bales of cotton. It takes about 3/4 acre to make one bale of cotton, which weighs about 480 lbs. With one bale of cotton, you can make:

215 Jeans
249 Bed Sheets
690 Terry Bath Towels
2,104 Boxer Shorts
6,436 Women's Knit Briefs
313,600 $100 Bills

I picked a few of the different stages of cotton that are visible now:

A Cotton Pod, Unopened
A Cotton Pod/Ball, Opening
A Cotton Ball, Ready to be Picked



Mississippi has the best-suited soil to growing cotton in the whole world. It is the fourth largest producer of cotton in the United States (which is second in the world to China in terms of production.) In terms of market value of agricultural products sold, the per farm average in Mississippi is $99,859. The average farm size is 323 acres. Other important crops in Mississippi include soybeans, sweet potatoes, rice, pecans, corn, and catfish.

For more information on cotton, check out:
National Cotton Council
Cotton Counts
Sustainable Cotton

For more information on Mississippi (including a list of our state symbols, like state drink: milk):
Mississippi State Profile