Cotton picking these days.

[smstonypoint]

The movie was made in 1967 so I'm not so sure that was for dramatic effect. In those days the fields often had to be picked twice with a mechanical picker and only once with human pickers. It might have been cheaper to have people do it.
Machines are much better today.

My earlier statement shows what I know -- not a cotton pickin' thing.

Steve

 

[Daver1963]

My earlier statement shows what I know -- nothing.

Steve

I wouldn't say that. Hollyweird is known for taking artistic license, this movie included. Its set in Sparta, Mississippi, which in reality in not much more than a hole in the road and at the very start of the movie Chief Gillespie has to chase a runaway and catches him running over a Mississippi River bridge. Either Gillespie has a slow car or the runaway is a great runner because the closest bridge across the river is about 125 miles away.

 

[smstonypoint]

I wouldn't say that. Hollyweird is known for taking artistic license, this movie included. Its set in Sparta, Mississippi, which in reality in not much more than a hole in the road and at the very start of the movie Chief Gillespie has to chase a runaway and catches him running over a Mississippi River bridge. Either Gillespie has a slow car or the runaway is a great runner because the closest bridge across the river is about 125 miles away.

I think I remember a former co-worker telling me that parts of the movie were filmed near his birthplace in Illinois. According to In the Heat of the Night (1967) - Filming Locations - IMDb, the cotton fields were filmed in Dyersbug, TN. Is that near Idlewild?

Steve

 

[Daver1963]

I think I remember a former co-worker telling me that parts of the movie were filmed near his birthplace in Illinois. According to In the Heat of the Night (1967) - Filming Locations - IMDb, the cotton fields were filmed in Dyersbug, TN. Is that near Idewild?

Steve

Dyersburg is about 32 miles west as the crow flies and about 40 by road. The Mississippi River is about another 15 miles west. That area out there will have cotton fields as far as the eye can see. We used to go over to Blytheville AFB, Arkansas back in the late 1970s to go to the commissary and I can remember then seeing long lines of people chopping (the weeds out of) cotton. At that time that was cheaper for weed control than herbicides. My uncle that farmed had stopped manual removal of weeds from his cotton about 1972. I was glad because I had just come of the age where I could go to the fields, and I did chop cotton, but sometimes more cotton than weeds!:laughing:
The TV series was done on location in a little town in Louisiana.

 

[Poopdeck Pappy]

I grew up on a farm in Oklahoma where we grew wheat and cotton primarily. When I was a kid in the late 50's, our cotton was picked by hand by field workers pulling cotton sacks. I've done some of that myself, and it is no fun.

We soon got a cotton stripper. Not a picker, which picks the cotton out of the boll. Our stripper just stripped the cotton boll off the stalk. We pulled a trailer behind it and the stripper blew the cotton into the trailer. Most of our trailers would hold the equivalent 3 bales of cotton if they were tromped down good. I was the "lucky" one that got the job of being the tromper. We generally stripped about 800 acres with a couple of two-row strippers.

It was only after I graduated from college and left home in the mid 70's that my dad got a 4 row stripper and a module builder. That was quite an advancement.

 

[smstonypoint]

I was curious as to the costs of this relatively new technology versus the conventional technology. I knew that ag. economists at one or more of the land-grant universities in major cotton-producing states must have studied the problem. For those interested (I realize that may be a limited audience, namely yours truly), I tracked down one such study from Mississippi State (MSU): http://cgs.chibichatter.com/wp-content/uploads/cottconf2008/Supplementary%20Materials/Valco%20and%20Martin.pdf.

It turns out that IH has an alternative module-building system. According to the MSU study, the estimated costs of harvesting through ginning per 500 lb. bale of lint are $84.23 for a conventional system, $71.29 for the IH system, and $81.64 for the JD system.

I hope that this does not set off the JD fans amongst the TBN family.

Steve

 

[cbarlandandcattleco]

As a young buck in Grade School, my Grandad gave me three acres of land to plant cotton on. My dad planted the cotton, then it was up to me to hoe the weeds and pick the cotton. Got one bale of cotton off that three acres, Next year I got another three more acres of cotton. By the time I was 21, My dad and I had leased over 300 acres. Liked to have starved and worked to death then. In 1964 I retired from farming in Childress county and moved to the big city (Dallas) to get a job and make a living. Well enough for my history. Just had to get it out. I still remember the good ole times.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Where I grew up and farmed a few years with my Dad after I got out of the army, it was predominantly cotton and soybeans. We had a combine and 2 row cotton picker for harvesting. Dad ran the combine which was the easiest to do as he could cut all day and make one trip to the grain elevator. I ran the 422 IH 2 row picker by my self. Had to gather trailers from the gin where they were ginned off the night before and transport them one at a time to the cotton field which might be 20 miles from the field. It usually took 4-8 trailers for a days worth of cotton depending on the yield per acre. I would start at 4am getting trailers and usually have them all in the field before the dew dried off, then also have to grease the machine daily. I would then pick till dew fall at night then have to haul all the trailer to the gin before going home usually get home about midnight. New day start all over again and this basically just barely made the notes on the picker which in 1972 sold for $36K. After a few years of this, I got married and brother was then old enough to assume my job so I left the farm for higher wages in the construction industry.
Farming has changed so much now that I wouldn't know how to farm anymore. Last time I visited my sister, who still lives not even 3/4 mile from the old home place, I commented to my brother in law that I didn't see any cotton in any fields around there. He said it got too expensive to grow and now there wasn't even a cotton gin in the area. Now it is soybeans, corn, rice and milo grown there and this year I only saw soybeans and corn. BIL said it depends on the market conditions as to what the farmers plant and they sell their crop before they plant based on average yield expectations. Everyone irrigates now which was just about unheard of in the 70's. I don't know how farmers can continue to exist what with prices of produce not much different from when I was on the farm using $10K tractors and $30K+ harvesting equipment which now cost in excess if $200K for a tractor and half a mil for a picker and fuel cost way up from $.30 per gallon.

 

[oldnslo]

The picker I cited was listed as a 2012 model: Stk #: CONSIGNMENT; 3 Hours; 500 hp; NEW NEVER USED! HAS POWERGUARD COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE FOR 36 TOTAL MONTHS OR 1000 TOTAL HOURS.

I don't have a clue as to how much JD dealers discount such large ticket items. Also, would EPA regulations (i.e. Tier 3 vs. 4) explain a price increase for the 2013 models?

Steve

Tier 4 will definitely raise the price just not sure how much. Also if a dealer has this on his lot he is probably very interested in moving it during the picking season so that could easily prompt him to reduce the price some also. If these are like cars JD's prices would also be for 2014's..

Any way you cut the cake still a lot of $$ for something you use a few weeks a year.

 

[Poopdeck Pappy]

. . . I don't know how farmers can continue to exist what with prices of produce not much different from when I was on the farm using $10K tractors and $30K+ harvesting equipment which now cost in excess if $200K for a tractor and half a mil for a picker and fuel cost way up from $.30 per gallon.

Amen to that. Doesn't make any sense to me either. But yields have increased a lot since then too. When I was on the farm, 40 bushels per acre of wheat was a great yield. Nowadays, 40 would be disappointing, and most of them around here seem to be shooting for 50 - 60.

I don't know what a "good" yield is today on cotton. 40 years ago, 1 bale per acre on dryland was great and you could actually make money if the price was decent (which wasn't always the case). These days, I suspect they have much higher yields.