Millions of acres of cotton grow across the Southern United States

1. Millions of acres of cotton grow across the Southern United States

2. Cotton Pickers or Brush Strippers move through the cotton field harvesting cotton off six or eight rows of cotton at a time. The cotton is stored in baskets above the harvester and then dumped into a cotton trailer when the basket is full.

3. The cotton is transferred from the cotton trailers to a module builder.

4. The module builder compresses the cotton to form a module (compactly pressed block) of cotton.  A module holds 12-14 bales of cotton.

5. The modules are hauled to a cotton gin or to the gin’s storage yard by a module mover.

6. The cotton fiber is separated from the cottonseed at the gin. The cotton is vacuumed into tubes that carry it to a dryer to reduce moisture and improve the fiber quality. Cleaning equipment removes leaf trash, sticks and other foreign matter.

7. The seed is sent to a cottonseed oil mill where it is processed.

8. The fiber (or lint) is compressed into bales, banded with eight steel straps, sampled for classing or grading, wrapped for protection then loaded onto trucks for shipment to storage yards, or textile mills. 

9. Cotton bales are 55 inches tall, 28 inches wide, and 21 inches thick, and weigh around 500 pounds. One bale is enough cotton to make 325 pairs of jeans. 

10. Textile mills purchase cotton bales from gins or cotton warehouses.  The mills start with raw cotton and process it in stages until it produces yarn fibers twisted into threads used in weaving of cloth. The cloth is dyed and cleaned, and shipped to clothing producers.