Cotton - Thoughts on a Week of Losses

Cotton isn't just a crop. For those who grow it, it's a member of the family. Lately, it's the errant cousin who has been pushed to the outside, the one who shows up now and then for reunions. The one we roll our eyes at when he's not looking.

I have never grown one stalk of cotton. But for years, I have made a living photographing the people and crops of agriculture. Cotton is the one that stays in my heart. I have witnessed the euphoria of a grower standing in a glorious field of 4-bale cotton. And, I've listened to a misty eyed farmer explain, as much to himself as to me, how he had to give up on cotton.

Recently, I came across Red Hills and Cotton - An Upcountry Memory by Ben Robertson, originally published in 1942. Robertson shares stories of his family's life in the Blue Ridge section of South Carolina, and how cotton was always present in their lives. His words from almost 60 years ago still ring true, no matter the market ups or downs, or the latest weed technology developments.

From: Red Hills and Cotton - An Upcountry Memory Ben Robertson, 1942

"Thirty years ago our Great-Aunt Narcissa began telling us the cotton kingdom was doomed--the world market was slipping irrevocably from us, we should begin substituting other crops. For at least fifteen years all of us have been fully aware that our reckoning day for cotton would inevitably come to hand, but even under these circumstances we have not turned away from cotton. We have gone right on plowing and planting. It is never easy for a people to give up a hundred-year-old tradition -- our lives and our fathers' fathers' lives have been built around cotton. We have bought our clothes with a bale of cotton; we have built our houses with cotton money; we have sold a bale of cotton to pay our way through school. We have even campaigned in politics atop a cotton bale. And even our Great-Aunt Narcissa stated once in public that she did not care what anybody in Washington or anyone else in the world said about cotton, it still was the greatest crop that heaven ever gave to any country."

- Debra Ferguson