Is Cotton Sustainable? Part 7: Picking the Cotton Fields

The next stop on our cotton farm tour sponsored by the Sustainable Cotton Project was a field currently being harvested.  Cotton is planted in April, matures over the summer and is harvested in October—usually.  This year, California had an unusually wet spring and cool summer, thereby delaying harvest almost a month. So, we were witnessing cotton harvest at the beginning of the second week in November!  Weather is yet another challenge farmers are only too familiar with.

Arriving in the fields

We arrived at the cotton field in time to see the “picker” harvester in action.  It is hard to explain the immense size of these machines.  The operator who sits in a glass cage atop the harvester looks like a toy in comparison to the machine.  Hopefully these pictures will adequately show the size comparison between machine and operator.

Cotton harvester

There are two types of harvesters used to pick cotton, a “picker” and a “stripper”. Both machines use a series of rotating teeth to grab and lift the fiber from the plant and blow it up and into the containment bin on top of the machine.  The picker is used for higher quality cotton because the mechanical action lifts the cotton fiber from the boll with minimal leaf and plant material, thus producing cleaner fiber. 

Explaining the picker.

The stripper’s mechanical action strips cotton fiber, boll, and leaf trash, leaving only the stem of the plant.  It is used to pick shorter fibers varieties. Harvesters also differ in the number of rows they pick with each pass through the field.  Some pick 2 rows, others pick four rows at a time.

Rotating teeth pull fiber from the plant.

The picker picks 4 rows in each pass through the fields.  The fields are marked with red paint to guide the picker operator in starting each pass.  As the picker moves into the field, four rows of rotating teeth grab and pull the fiber from the boll.  A vacuum pulls the fiber into the waiting hopper.

Starting a row.

At the end of the row, the picker turns around and returns through the next four rows.  Two passes through the field will fill the picker’s hopper.

The harvester returns with a full load.

At the end of each pass through the fields the harvester’s hopper is full and must be unloaded.  The hopper is tilted and fiber is dumped into a module machine (similar to garbage trucks dumping trash).

Harvester lines up approach.

Full harvester approachs module compressor.

Harvester turns for approach.

Dumping the hopper.

Harvester prepares to dump load.

Dump begins.

Dumping continues.

Empty hopper returns to original possition.

Hopper empties.

Cotton is compressed into modules and left on the roadside for pick up.

The module machine compresses the cotton fiber into rectangular “modules” the approximate size of a train box car. 

When the module machine is full, the module is pushed out the end of the machine and left in rows along the field access roads awaiting transport to the cotton gin.

Compressed module awaiting transport to the gin.