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GINNING MARKETPLACE
COTTON FARMING IS THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE GINNING INDUSTRY.
2020 Bale Packaging Specifications Approved
William Beam, U.S. Department of Agriculture deputy administrator for Farm Programs, notified the National Cotton Council that the Joint Cotton Industry Bale Packaging Committee 2020 specification recommendations for cotton bale packaging materials are approved for Commodity Credit Corporation loan program purposes.
The 2020 specifications are identical to the specifications for the previous year’s crop except for the following revisions: ¡ Removed all references to Cold Rolled High Tensile Steel
Strapping. ¡ Updated North American Free Trade Agreement references to U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. ¡ Added light blue as an approved color for woven polypropylene.
At the JCIBPC February meeting, the Committee approved adding a color to the woven polypropylene bagging specifications. The discussion that led to this decision was based on some mills’ perception that “invisible” contamination comes from damaged woven polypropylene bagging when the tapes have fibrillated.
To detect contamination in fiber, mills are installing camera-based detection and separation systems in their cleaning rooms. These systems use color-sensing technology to detect and then separate contaminants from cotton fiber. Some mills have expressed a preference for a more detectable color because the spectra of previously approved white and golden bagging colors are very similar to cotton fiber spectra and thus, if present, can be di icult for the camera systems to detect.
JCIBPC sta consulted with scientists at the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Lubbock Ginning Laboratory to determine the most detectable color compared to cotton fiber for
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these camera systems. With that guidance, sta recommended a translucent light blue equivalent to Pantone 306 C as an additional color for woven polypropylene bagging.
The 2020 JCIBPC specifications are on the NCC’s website at www.cotton.org/tech/bale/specs/. The specifications also include a test program review section that provides information on two continuing lightweight cotton bale bag test programs and one Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) strap compatibility test program.
The National Cotton Council provided this information.
Make Seed House Safety A Priority
Overhead seed houses are valuable for short-term seed storage, wet seed storage and gins with limited yard space. Design improvements allow overhead seed houses to be an e icient method for loading trucks from flat-storage houses. When fully loaded, a double-hopper seed house can weigh 200,000 pounds or more. This load hovers above trucks and personnel, so structural integrity is critical.
Volatile weather can put older seed houses at risk, especially those not properly maintained. Through the years, moisture and chemicals from seed along with humidity cause the inevitable — rust and corrosion. Since the damage primarily occurs inside the seed house, it’s out of sight and mind. If a structural failure occurs, personnel are put at risk of injury.
All cotton gins should review their overhead seed house safety and maintenance procedures before the start of the 2020 cotton ginning season.
Safety Comes First
¡ Never go beneath a seed hopper that contains seed. ¡ Properly guard all ladders and catwalks. ¡ Do not enter the seed trailer or climb on the side walls of the trailer. ¡ Post decals, “DANGER – DO NOT ENTER AREA BELOW
HOPPER DOORS WHEN SEED IS IN STORAGE HOUSE.”
These are free from your local ginning association. ¡ Contact your ginning association or loss control representative to get a copy of the “Cottonseed System Safety Policy” for employees, visitors and outside contractors such as seed haulers. ¡ Be sure to use all other known gin safety procedures daily.
Maintain And Repair
¡ All proper safety precautions should be taken by all personnel who perform maintenance and repairs. ¡ Clean out all seed. ¡ Clean hopper panels to remove seed oil. Steam cleaning consistently works well. ¡ Use sanding and steel brushing to make the inside surfaces of the hopper panels smooth again. ¡ Carefully examine the entire seed house for stress fractures and loose hardware, especially if vibrators have been used. ¡ Remove rust and corrosion.
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View From The Catwalk
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proximately 9.5 feet above the driveway. This provides a good vantage point to see into the tops of the trailers to determine when to open and close the hopper doors.
Jim Granberry, president of Cliff Granberry Corp., contributed this article. Email jim@cliffgranberrycorp.com or call (972) 381-8899.
Cotton’s Calendar
Due to the fluid situation involving COVID-19, some listed events may be canceled or postponed. Please verify the status with the individual organizations.
¢ June 16-18: Cotton Incorporated Board Meeting, Omni Mandalay Bay, Dallas, Texas ¢ June 17: Staplcotn Board of Directors Meeting, Greenwood, Mississippi
¢ June 17: PCCA Board, Delegate Body & Marketing Pool Committee Meetings, Lubbock, Texas
¢ June 18: Calcot Board of Directors Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona
¢ July 9-12: Cottonseed & Feed Association 2020 Annual Meeting, Intercontinental Hotel, Kansas City, Missouri
¢ July 16: Calcot Board of Directors Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona
¢ July 20-23: Southern Southeastern Mid-Year Board Meeting, Sheraton Bay Point, Panama City Beach, Florida
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Not A Cotton Picker
Sporting a faded, floppy-brimmed f e d o r a , A u n t Blanche would lay on the horn of her bob truck even though my older brother, Mike, and I were waiting for her on our front porch. We grabbed our new 9-foot-long Bemis Blue Cat cotton picking sacks made of heavy canvas with rubber dots on the bottom, and our paper bag lunches of rag baloney sandwiches, Lay’s potato chips and Hostess Cup Cakes, and scrambled into the corroded truck bed already loaded with cotton pickers. Dutch and Charlotte, twins from my second-grade class, motioned Mike and me to sit beside them. Dutch was tow-headed; Charlotte’s bowl-cut hair was almost as short as her brother’s. We laughed as we headed for the country.
In the late ’50s, many rural schools in the South let out so the children could help their families pick cotton. Back then, I jumped at the chance to get out of the classroom and make a little spending money — money to buy a Mickey Mantle baseball glove — by picking cotton on Aunt Blanche’s farm.
I picked cotton, but I was not a cotton picker.
That first morning, I reached down to pull what I thought was a big bottom boll, but instead was a baby rabbit. Mike, who was a fourth-grader, several other children and I played with that rabbit until the grownups made us go back to work. Later, while I was bent over a cotton row pulling lint from pointed burrs, something thumped the side of my head and plopped to the ground; a green boll rolled at my feet in the furrow. I looked up.
Charlotte, a few feet behind Dutch several rows over, giggled at me and nodded at her brother. I started chunking top green bolls at him, and he threw several back. Mike and Charlotte joined in. A few stray shots struck some grownups, who yelled at us to stop horsing around. We did, but behind the grownups’ backs, we smiled conspiratorially.
Mike, Dutch, Charlotte and I finally filled our sacks enough to justify toting them over our shoulders to the weigh wagon parked on the turnrow. We didn’t tamp down the cotton by banging our sacks bottom first on the ground like the grownups or older kids did. Individually, we hooked our picking sacks to the scales first by the wire loop at the bottom corner of the sack, and then by the shoulder strap. After we had our sacks weighed, we emptied them in the trailer, and then wrestled each other on the soft mat of seed cotton until Aunt Blanche fussed at us, running us back into the field.
In 1960, 90 percent of all the U.S. cotton grown was handpicked. By ’65, 95 percent was machine harvested. I admire those tough men, women and children who picked cotton daily for income — not spending money — until mechanized pickers finally displaced them.
And could some of them pick a lot of cotton in one day! The files of my hometown newspaper, The Democrat Argus, in Caruthersville, Mo., recorded that in 1902, a Newt Adams was proclaimed the picking winner of nearby Braggadocio, having picked 421 pounds on the 27th of October.
The late, great Dr. Hal Lewis, a life-long champion of the U.S. cotton industry, especially its farmers, once told me that when his older brother was young, he could pick 500 pounds a day. One time from a turnrow on their Dell, Ark., family farm, Hal said he was watching his brother pick, and their father remarked, “He’s a cotton-pickin’ dude.” Hal nodded. “That he is.” Then the father regarded Hal, smiled, and said, “And you’re a dude pickin’ cotton.” Hal nodded again. “That I am.”
I enjoyed my two weeks of picking cotton in 1959. Savoring temporary freedom from school. Doing fun things like chunking green bolls and wrestling in cotton trailers with my older brother and our friends. Earning money to help buy a coveted baseball glove instead of asking my parents for it.
I picked cotton, but I was not a cotton picker.
Squinting from beneath her floppy fedora, Aunt Blanche would’ve grunted in agreement. — Patrick R. Shepard Germantown, Tennessee Patrick R. Shepard
“In 1960, 90 percent of U.S. cotton grown was handpicked.” Originally published in June 2016
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