Agriculture

One of the earliest environmentally themed projects for Cotton Incorporated was the evolution of the cotton harvest system. Until the mid-1940s, cotton was mostly picked by hand. Open trailers moved the harvested bolls from the field to the gin. When mechanical harvesting was introduced, the picking process accelerated, but ginning was slower to adapt. Farmers had to store the harvested cotton in trailers and would be forced to stop harvesting if the gin had not processed all their cotton when all the trailers were full.

Soon after its formation, Cotton Incorporated began working with Texas A&M University on a module building system, which enabled harvested cotton to be compacted and stored as a very large trapezoidal bale, 7.5 feet wide, 32 feet long and 11 feet high. These modules could stay in the field, covered by waterproof tarps, until the gin was ready to receive the harvested cotton.

Developers also worked on specialized haulers to move the modules from the field to the gin. Trucks were outfitted with tilted beds of parallel rows of conveyor chains that could load or unload the module in sync with the truck’s speed. With these enhancements, the trucks could move modules at higher speeds for longer distances.

At the ginning stage, it quickly became apparent that the traditional system used to suction loose cotton would not be effective with the compressed modules. Developers created new systems that conveyed the entire module into a feeder that rapidly separated the cotton back into individual tuffs. Because of the significant increase in efficiency, the module builder, transporter and feeder combination was quickly adopted wherever cotton was mechanically harvested.

Advancements such as these have aided efficiency at the field level. Farmers now use wider harvesters that handle six to eight rows and employ carts known as boll buggies, which collect the cotton from the harvester and return it to the module builders. This process allows the pickers to spend 70% of the time on the row harvesting.

Some of the newest machines from Case IH and John Deere both pick the cotton and form the modules on the harvester. John Deere’s version even triple-wraps the picked cotton in plastic before the round bales roll off the machine and onto the field.

Innovations such as the module builder and the ongoing work in optimizing the flow between field and gin have advanced cotton’s sustainability by mitigating crop loss, reducing fuel use and fostering an efficient flow of fiber from the field through the gin.

In the past 10 years, sustainability has become a key word across most industries. Yet Cotton Incorporated was practicing sustainability before it even had a name.

Still, the company knew it was essential that its data be credible and aligned along industry standards. To that end, Cotton Incorporated participates in a number of sustainability initiatives, including Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, a consortium of food companies, commodities, brands and retailers focused on reducing the impact of farming and making agriculture more environmentally friendly.

Early on, Cotton Incorporated recognized that reducing pesticide use was a priority because it presented both an economic and environmental cost to growers. Likewise, the company supported research into more efficient water use by producers.

Today, cotton production is highly efficient as a result of modern seed technology, conservation tillage practices, advanced scientific research, and machinery and equipment practices. All have combined to help U.S. farmers increase yield—two times more today than in the 1960s—on the same amount of cotton acreage. In fact, cotton is meeting 30% of the world’s textile needs on 2.5% of agricultural land resources. Future fiber demand can be met on fixed land resources on the expectation of continued yield increase.

In the early days of Cotton Incorporated, the company’s scientists were adamant in combating the threat of the boll weevil. To understand their determination, it is important to note how devastating the insect was both to the environment and to the grower’s bottom line.

The Anthonomus grandis (boll weevil) migrated from Mexico to the United States in the late 1800s and spread rapidly throughout the Cotton Belt. It was the single most destructive pest to the U.S. cotton industry, eventually costing producers more than $15 billion, both from yield losses and costs to control the insect.

In 1958, the National Cotton Council recognized the severity of the boll weevil’s damage, and, with congressional leadership and support, the USDA Boll Weevil Research Lab was created. Eradication experiments and control programs were soon rolled out. In the late 1970s, the National Boll Weevil Eradication Program was launched along the Virginia–North Carolina border. The program soon expanded into other Southeastern states, followed by areas of Arizona, California and Mexico. Later programs were launched in Oklahoma, New Mexico, the Mid-South and Texas.

Cotton Incorporated was unequivocal in the need for grower commitment to the program, and its influence helped engage grower participation.

The eradication involved using three main techniques over a three-to-five-year period: the laying of pheromone traps to detect the presence of the boll weevils, reducing the weevil’s food supply and malathion applications. In its early days, all three techniques were employed in a tiered system. Today, it is much more sophisticated, using GPS mapping and bar-coded traps that can transmit data electronically.

These extensive efforts have resulted in the near-total eradication of the boll weevil throughout cotton-growing states in America. Today, the boll weevil has been eradicated in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi. The Far West is also boll weevil free in California, Arizona, Oklahoma and New Mexico. In Texas, the pests were found in just three of the 16 eradication zones. Numbers have been reduced substantially in two of the zones and remained stable in the third.

There are numerous ecological benefits of the program; perhaps most significant is a reduced need for pesticide applications. Another advantage is that this allows other insects to survive, including natural predators to the boll weevil.

As devastating as the boll weevil was to the U.S. cotton industry—and still is to other countries—it was not the only pest to have a significant impact on cotton yield. Producers were also faced with attacks from tobacco budworms, cotton bollworms and pink bollworms. By the mid-1990s, invasions from these pests meant a 4% reduction in yields, or a quarter-billion dollars worth of cotton.

By the 1980s, insects had begun to evolve a tolerance to topically applied synthetic insecticides, just as scientists and environmentalists began to realize that improper use of synthetic chemicals had negative impacts on the environment and more benign options were needed.

After years of laboratory research and field trials by numerous scientists worldwide, a bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, which is harmless to animals and humans, was successfully incorporated into the DNA of the cotton plant.

Scientists knew Bt was a good candidate for biotech cotton because it had been used as an organic pesticide since 1920, primarily to kill flour moths, without any harmful effects to humans or the environment. Today, Bt is still approved for and widely used in organic farming.

As a liquid spray, Bt was not very effective for insect control because it was negatively affected by the weather: rain rapidly washed it away, and the sun degenerated its beneficial properties. Plants that expressed the Bt protein, however, did not need to be sprayed with chemical insecticides; pests that ate the plant either died or left the field in search of other sources of food.

Cotton Incorporated sponsored research at leading research universities, including Texas A&M and Texas Tech, to expedite a viable, bioengineered Bt protein, and, in 1996, commercial Bt cotton varieties became available to U.S. growers.

Prior to commercialization, the USEPA, the USDA and the FDA subjected Bt cotton, like every other biotech product, to rigorous regulatory evaluation. Comprehensive environmental and human safety studies were conducted, ruling out the possibility of harm to existing plants, nontarget organisms and humans.

From 1996 to 2007, 23% less insecticide active ingredient was used in Bt-adopting countries, and the resulting environmental impact from reduced insecticide use has fallen by 28%, as measured by the Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ). Since the introduction of Bt cotton, the number of insecticide applications in the United States has been reduced by half. In 2008, 44% of U.S. cotton farms had fields that required no foliar insecticides. That same year, nearly one-third of U.S. cotton acreage required no additional insecticide applications.

Not only has Bt cotton reduced insecticide use, but it has also improved lint yield and reduced the costs to growers, who in turn spend less on insecticide supplies, equipment and labor. Additionally, Bt cotton has lowered the quantity of chemicals that enter the environment. Moving forward, the industry seeks to develop plants that are resistant to an even wider variety of insect pests.