Another Cotton-Picking Day in the Delta
By Chrissy Garner on Thursday October 20, 2011
agriculture, mississippi-delta, mississippi-river, outdoors, tourism, tunica
When someone mentions the Delta, what comes to mind? Probably The Blues, the Mississippi River, agriculture, casinos, and, of course, cotton! If you’ve visited Tunica, you can see that we rose from acres of farm land to become the great gaming destination we are today. You may have glanced at the fields of cotton on your way to one of our casinos and maybe even stopped to grab a little.
Being that we’re not originally from the Delta area, Lisa and I wanted to learn more about cotton and experience a cotton picker for ourselves.
We were pretty impressed with the ride and the ease of use for the driver. Even though the drivers may find the ride monotonous, Lisa and I found it quite relaxing. The part we couldn’t get over was how the cotton went from being on the plant and into a bale in a matter of minutes!
We hope you enjoy our photos and learn a little something that you didn’t know before. Thanks to local cotton farmer Will Owen and farm manager Jared Ross for appeasing our interest.
Did you know?
Harvesting just a few years ago required four pieces of machinery (cotton picker, tractor, cotton basket/collector and module builder) with up to five men. Technology has advanced to the modern cotton picker that Lisa and I rode that can pick, separate, collect and then compact the cotton into the round plastic covered bales all with one driver!
Tunica and the Mississippi Delta is a great place to grow cotton because of the mild climate and rich soil, which creates a perfect environment. As you may have previously learned at the Tunica RiverPark & Museum, the Mississippi Delta soil is so rich because of the settling of sediment from the northern Mississippi River Valley. The Mississippi Delta topsoil is estimated at being 28 feet deep.
The Mississippi Delta region was once the world’s largest producer of cotton. Today, however, the U.S. ranks 3rd (based on averages from 2006-2008), just behind China (1st) and India (2nd). There are over 25,000 acres of cotton in Tunica County.
A bale of cotton equals 500 lbs. A module holds 13-15 bales or weighs up to 7,500 lbs. The new round bales are estimated to weigh up to 6,000. When transporting to the cotton gin, a flat bed truck can move one module or four of the new round bales. One 500 lb. bale of cotton can make 1,217 men’s T-shirts.
For more information on cotton, visit
www.cotton.org and
www.cottoninc.com.