In the last fortnight, I rode by a farm in South Georgia where cotton was making its way toward harvest. It brought about some down-on-the-farm nostalgia, good and bad, but also served as a reminder of just how historically important this cash crop has been to farmers and agribusinessmen in the South, and Georgia in particular.
Georgia currently ranks third nationally among cotton-producing states in acres planted and also production. Agriculturally, cotton has always held sway in the economic impact of the state. It takes 200 days for cotton to mature into the fluffy white stuff most valuable to growers, and cotton’s current contribution to our state’s economy is about $1.5 billion annually.
Two things make cotton farming today different than in yesteryear: most significantly the eradication of the boll weevil, and the prevalence of mechanical picking machines.
Picking cotton involved back-breaking labor back in the day, when profit from the crop was so significant that doctors and lawyers, for example, plied their respective trades in town while simultaneously owning cotton-producing land out in the county.
In 1785, many Georgians imported Sea Island cotton from the West Indies. Sea Island cotton had a long, strong fiber and was much in demand, but when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 at Savannah, that brought about an opportunity for the shorter staple varieties of cotton to flourish in the South.
Sadly, shamefully, it also introduced slavery as the answer of the times to meet the demand for cheap labor. Originally Georgia was not a slave state, but Whitney’s invention changed all that and inextricably linked the state’s cotton crop to America’s most shameful domestic experience.
It remains a boon to big-time farming.
As I was growing up, my daddy rented his farm of 300 acres and depended on a good cotton crop to pay the bills and occasionally buy a little something special for the family. There was nothing he admired more than surveying his field of robust cotton blooming and maturing for harvest. He would walk out into the gleaming rows of white, smile, and whisper a prayer of thanks as he bowed his head in reverence.
He worked long hours to make ends meet, maintaining faith there would always be a productive harvest. He prayed for rain when it was dry and for enough good, clear, dry days in late summer and early fall to get his cotton picked.
He prayed his crop dusting would kill the boll weevil, the bane of cotton farmers since the pest came up from Mexico in the early 1900s. He didn’t smoke and was an advocate of clean living, but never worried about having to use toxic insecticides. Most of all, he had to provide for his family and felt the risk was worth it. His instincts proved correct as he lived to the ripe old age of 92.
A philosophical advocate of the Golden Rule, my father held unrelenting contempt for the dastardly boll weevil, which he castigated for its cowardly ways, ruining a cotton crop like a thief in the night. When Tex Ritter sang the “Boll Weevil” song, depicting the boll weevil looking for a home, my father was not amused, because when the boll weevil found a home, it meant there would be nothing left to get out of debt come November.
There have been several songs written about cotton. It was Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, who in 1940 penned the lyrics to “The Cotton Song,” a mournful tune that testified to the wrath of the boll weevil. “When them cotton balls get rotten, you couldn’t pick very much cotton,” he wrote.
Perhaps surprisingly, it was the scourge of the boll weevil that led to the introduction of another major crop to the South’s landscape and coffers. To turn lemons into lemonade, an enterprising farmer in Enterprise, Alabama, talked his neighbors into planting peanuts instead of cotton. It worked. He and many others eventually made peanuts their primary cash crop.
Cotton remains a survivor, however. It has been around for more than 8,000 years and its use remains around us every day in our clothing, underwear, bed sheets, and towels. Then there is the cottonseed oil you find in salad dressing and margarine, soap, candles, and cosmetic makeup.
So yes, we have whipped the despicable boll weevil and nowadays, nobody has a backache from stooping over picking cotton in the hot sun.
Hallelujah!