Mechanical Cotton Picker Research Articles

Multiple Attributed Parametric Review Study on Mechanical Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) Harvesters

Crop characteristics of cotton are crucial to identify the important crop attributes like plant height, canopy width, sympods and monopods distribution, row spacing which affects the performance of mechanical harvesters. The activity and effectiveness of most harvest aids, including desiccants is reduced by low temperature conditions. Trash content was observed to be lesser in cotton harvested by cotton picker than cotton harvested by cotton stripper. It was found that a maximum cotton yield of 1000 kg acre-1 was obtained for a cotton plant population ranging between 45,000 and 90,000 plants acre-1. Likewise, a minimum of 700 to 740 kg acre-1 was observed for a cotton plant population of 33,000 plants acre-1. In higher yielding cotton, cotton pickers recorded higher picking rate than cotton strippers. Picking/harvesting efficiency of cotton stripper with both finger and brush type mechanism was higher than the spindle type cotton picker. Picking efficiency of pneumatic picker was higher than the other types of picking mechanisms, but with lesser rate of picking capacity. Gin turnout of cotton was higher with cotton picker when compared with cotton stripper due to lesser trash content in picker harvested cotton. The horsepower requirement of cotton stripper ranged from ½ to ¼ horsepower and cost is about two-thirds of the price as compared with cotton picker. The scheduling and monitoring of various activities involved in cotton picking by using a suitable software model can increase the benefits of both growers and harvesting companies. The reduction in uniformity with roller gin-type lint cleaners ranged between 0.2 to 0.8%, which was lesser as compared with saw-type lint cleaners. Introducing mechanical harvesting has always been a decades-long process. In Turkey, it took 20 years and in Greece, this process took place very gradually over a 15-year period. Top cotton producing countries like India, Pakistan, China, Uzbekistan and other developing countries like Iran Paraguay are still not using machine harvesting. The introduction of mechanical cotton picker or stripper can help improve quality and quantity of cotton picking thereby giving more benefit to growers in developing countries and improving their socio-economic status. The most controversial issue raised by the introduction of the mechanical cotton harvester is great migration as the machines eliminated jobs and forced poor families to leave their homes and farms in search for urban jobs. Therefore Government policies towards cotton harvesting mechanization must include the alternative jobs, packages for dependent manual cotton pickers and their families.

Remote control device to control the contact uniformity of the brush strippers on the spindle’s surface of the cotton picking apparatus

In this paper, the question of implementation remote control of contact uniformity of brush strippers on a spindles surface of the harvest device of the mechanical cotton picker is considered. A brief analysis of known works is carried out and the urgency of the development of a specialized remote control system for the rotation speed of brush strippers and the uniformity of touching the brush strips on the surface of the spindles is substantiated. As a sensing element, it is proposed to use a strain gauge that changes its ohmic resistance when the stripper brush touches the spindle surface. A wireless GSM communication unit is used for remote transmission and reception of information.

“Machinery Has Completely Taken Over”: The Diffusion of the Mechanical Cotton Picker, 1949–1964

Hand picking of cotton in the United States virtually disappeared twenty years after the first mechanical harvester was marketed in 1949. Contrary to received accounts, southern social institutions did not impede the diffusion of the mechanical cotton picker from the West to the cotton belt in the South so much as environmental factors and educational attainment did. Rising cotton yields and exogenous technological change drove diffusion by reducing the costs of machine harvesting. Labor displacement resulting from the cotton picker occurred only in a concentrated burst after 1959.

Leaving the Land of Opportunity: Arkansas and the Great Migration

BETWEEN 1930 AND 1970, almost fifteen million Americans left their homes and farms to seek new opportunities in other states, one of the largest movements in American history.1 When popular literature and television documentaries describe this migration, the story usually involves black migrants who ride the Illinois Central out of the Mississippi Delta in a desperate escape from the malevolent effects of the mechanical cotton picker.2 Yet this movement involved more white migrants than black, and they headed to destinations all over the country. These migrants were searching for better jobs rather than fleeing mechanization. Arkansas's role in the Great Migration has been a closely guarded secret, or just ignored. Perhaps because migrants made a statement about Arkansas that is unsettling, most Arkansas historians have paid little attention to their leaving, though the was the largest domestic event of World-War-II-era and postwar Arkansas. C. Calvin Smith's study of Arkansas during World War II focuses on economic hardship and injustice and criticizes the failure of the state government to address these issues. By neglecting to mention migration, he ignores what people themselves did to better their lives. For all its encyclopedic coverage, Michael Dougan's Arkansas Odyssey makes only casual references to and twentiethcentury changes. textbook Arkansas: A Narrative History, by Jeannie Whayne, Thomas DeBlack, George Sabo, and Morris Arnold, does not even include the terms migration or population in the index, surely an indication of perceived lack of importance.3 Other historians have treated at somewhat greater length. S. Charles Bolton has, in an essay, briefly commented on losses during World War II and their effect on the state's economic development. In Arkansas in Modern America, Ben Johnson declares, The state's most dramatic net loss was its thereby placing more firmly within the framework of Arkansas history. Brooks Blevins's Hill Folks presents a valuable discussion of both into and out of the Arkansas Ozarks, showing how changes shaped the region.4 Yet we still lack a comprehensive treatment of migration's impact on the state as a whole. Migration represents one of the most enduring forces shaping Arkansas history. Pioneers emigrating mostly from Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia settled the state in the first half of the nineteenth century.5 After the Civil War, Arkansas continued to gain from in-migration. state government, planters, and railroads encouraged settlement during this period, soliciting people from as far away as China, Germany, and Italy.6 Unfortunately, good land soon ran out, leaving many of the state's rural areas overpopulated in relation to arable soil. earliest out-migration, beginning in the 1890s, was in part a response to this fundamental problem. Population losses continued in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, Arkansas lost almost 200,000 people, a record high to that point. Migration slowed slightly during the depressed 1930s, but by the 1940s, when the national economy shifted to war production, the stream that had previously been a steady leak turned into a torrential flood. Arkansas, in fact, lost in every decade between 1890 and 1970.7 Still, remains one of the most under-researched topics in the state's past. We do not know much at all about these twentieth-century migrants: where they went, why they left, who they were, what kind of work they did, or what impact their departure had on their native state. Indeed, we have overlooked migration's impact on postwar agriculture, politics, and even civil rights. At the height of the migration, observers of the Arkansas scene were alarmed at the state's losses. In 1940, University of Arkansas rural economist William H. …

The Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped the Modern South

In the Cotton South before World War II, every task, from plowing to cultivating to harvesting the crop, was done by hand. These labor-intensive practices, coupled with too many farmers -- both tenants and owners -- trying to survive on small, uneconomical farms, kept the region poor, backward, and unmechanized. From 1940 to 1970, however, in the Great Migration, southern blacks and whites thronged to new opportunities in the postwar, industrial North. In this revisionist study, Donald Holley marshals impressive statistical and narrative evidence to show that mechanization occurred in the Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi only after the region's oversupply of small farmers was reduced. He thereby corrects a long-standing belief that mechanization pushed labor off the land. Development of the mechanical cotton picker not only made possible the continuation of cotton cultivation in the post-plantation era, it helped free the region of Jim Crow laws as political power was relocated from farms to cities and thereby opened the door for the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Just as President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed African Americans from chattel slavery, the mechanical cotton picker freed laborers from the drudgery of the cotton harvest and brought the agricultural South into a period of greater prosperity.

An Exercise To Explore The Future Impact Of New Technologies

New technologies have the potential to drastically change the way people and firms conduct business. But the future is difficult to predict, and the inherent uncertainty of a new technology's impact can be troubling. This article describes an exercise that has participants evaluate a 1937 U.S. Government sponsored technology forecast. The forecast identified thirteen inventions that were predicted to have a significant impact on society during the subsequent 10–25 years. These inventions included the television, facsimile machine, mechanical cotton picker, and trailer homes, among others. Participants in the exercise are challenged to evaluate the accuracy of the 1937 forecast, and develop and understanding of the issues inherent in predicting the future impact of new technologies. They are then challenged to identify today's new technologies, and make predictions regarding these technologies' future impact. Today's new technologies may change important aspects of everyday life over the next few decades, and significantly influence the competitiveness of certain firms.The exercise illustrates how difficult it can be to anticipate the future impact of new technologies. New technologies take time to develop, and most forecasts are overly optimistic regarding the rate of development and adoption. New technologies can also develop in ways not anticipated, and a new technology may have uses that are difficult to foresee. These challenges notwithstanding, it is still important to regularly track new technologies and attempt to anticipate their potential impact. The greatest danger comes not from having inaccurate predictions of the future impact of new technologies, but from having not thought about the potential impacts.The exercise was developed for use in an executive MBA program to encourage participants to think beyond the budgets and deadlines that drive much of their regular work activity. It was designed to challenge them to reevaluate whether they, and their firm, were thinking about how new technologies might impact their industry. The exercise has the greatest impact and applicability when conducted at corporate programs or with Executive MBA students, but can be used in a typical MBA or MS program as well. It can be conducted in a three‐four hour session, or over multiple shorter sessions. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Perspective: an exercise to explore the future impact of new technologies

New technologies have the potential to drastically change the way people and firms conduct business. But the future is difficult to predict, and the inherent uncertainty of a new technology’s impact can be troubling. This article describes an exercise that has participants evaluate a 1937 U.S. Government sponsored technology forecast. The forecast identified thirteen inventions that were predicted to have a significant impact on society during the subsequent 10–25 years. These inventions included the television, facsimile machine, mechanical cotton picker, and trailer homes, among others. Participants in the exercise are challenged to evaluate the accuracy of the 1937 forecast, and develop and understanding of the issues inherent in predicting the future impact of new technologies. They are then challenged to identify today’s new technologies, and make predictions regarding these technologies’ future impact. Today’s new technologies may change important aspects of everyday life over the next few decades, and significantly influence the competitiveness of certain firms. The exercise illustrates how difficult it can be to anticipate the future impact of new technologies. New technologies take time to develop, and most forecasts are overly optimistic regarding the rate of development and adoption. New technologies can also develop in ways not anticipated, and a new technology may have uses that are difficult to foresee. These challenges notwithstanding, it is still important to regularly track new technologies and attempt to anticipate their potential impact. The greatest danger comes not from having inaccurate predictions of the future impact of new technologies, but from having not thought about the potential impacts. The exercise was developed for use in an executive MBA program to encourage participants to think beyond the budgets and deadlines that drive much of their regular work activity. It was designed to challenge them to reevaluate whether they, and their firm, were thinking about how new technologies might impact their industry. The exercise has the greatest impact and applicability when conducted at corporate programs or with Executive MBA students, but can be used in a typical MBA or MS program as well. It can be conducted in a three-four hour session, or over multiple shorter sessions.

The second great emancipation: the mechanical cotton picker, black migration, and how they shaped the modern South

The second great emancipation: the mechanical cotton picker, black migration, and how they shaped the modern South

Forty Defining Moments of the Twentieth-century South

Spring 2001's South Polls unveiled our list of Twenty Most Influential Southerners of the Twentieth Century. Mike Burg, president of Edge Marketing in Charlotte, North Carolina, had asked me to develop the list as the century was coming to an end. He also had asked for a list of Defining Moments of the Twentieth-century South--events that symbolized, set in motion, or represented the culmination of important changes for the region. Our panel of thirteen distinguished southerners obliged with forty: twenty before mid-century and twenty after. (This was the same panel we used to compile our list of influential southerners. The panel was composed of men and women who had written or thought about the South and who we chose to be broadly representative of professional fields and subregions.) There was less consensus from our panel on particular moments than on individual southerners, and there was some unavoidable arbitrariness in defining what a moment is, but it will surprise no one to see that the two big stories of the twentieth-century South are the transition from an agricultural to an urban society and the transformation effected by the Civil Rights movement. An asterisk (*) indicates that ten or more panelists chose the event. FORTY DEFINING MOMENTS OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOUTH 1901-1950 1901 The Spindletop oil strike, which marked the beginning of the Texas/Oklahoma/Louisiana oil industry. 1903 The Wright brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk. 1906 The Atlanta race riot, one of the bloodiest episodes of the Jim Crow era, and arguably the low point of race relations in the South. 1915 Leo Frank's lynching. 1915 The premiere of Birth of a Nation, the movie whose success inspired the second KKK. 1917 *The beginning of Great Migration during WWI. 1919 The start of Florida land boom. 1925 *The Scopes Trial, which pitted William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow in a struggle over the teaching of evolution. 1927 The Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers recording in Bristol. 1927 The Mississippi flood of 1927, one of the great natural disasters of the century that destroyed thousands of homes. 1931 The Scottsboro case. 1933 *Creation of the TVA, one of the biggest New Deal programs in the South, which laid the foundations for rural electrification and industrialization in the Tennessee River Valley. 1934 The great textile strike of 1934, one of the biggest and most bitter episodes in the troubled history of southern labor relations. 1935 *Rural electrification (REA). 1935 Huey Long's assassination. 1936 *The invention of the Rust mechanical cotton picker, which completed the work of the boll weevil in displacing southern agricultural workers. 1939 The premiere of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta, the film that shaped the way the world thought of the American South. 1939 *Willis Carrier's perfection of the air-conditioner, which laid the basis for modern industrialization and for migration to the South. …

Measuring Sustainable Cotton Production Using Total Factor Productivity

Continuous cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) production was examined using data from Alabama's long-term Old Rotation experiment (c. 1896). Index values were used to examine trends in productivity and sustainability for 95 yr. Treatments studied were those receiving (i) no N fertilizers and no winter legumes for 95 yr, (ii) only winter legumes as a source of N, and (iii) chemical fertilizer N. Three sets of index numbers were calculated from all inputs and outputs involved in the production systems: (i) total factor productivity (TFP), which accounts for an direct production inputs, but which does not consider production externalities; (ii) productivity relative to a base plot; and (iii) total social factor productivity (TSFP), which accounts for all direct production inputs as well as externalities of soil erosion and pesticide use. Viewed from the 95-yr perspective of the Old Rotation experiment, all three treatments fulfill at least one criterion required for a system to be considered sustainable. Output per unit of input is higher in 1991 than in 1896, even when externalities are valued. None of the systems showed a linear trend in output or TFP over the life of the experiment; productivity cycles are present in all three systems, despite a positive overall trend. An average annual rate of TSFP growth of 1.8%/yr was attained- Accounting for erosion and pesticide externalities reduced the annual productivity growth rate by 0.2%/yc The system that has neither an organic nor a chemical source of added N was less productive and less sustainable than the two other systems with a 0.3%/yr TSFP growth rate. The plots using organic and chemical sources of N had similar productivity impacts. Valuing soil erosion and pesticide externalities had only a modest effect on measured productivity. The most dramatic single event to affect the productivity of cotton farming was the introduction of the mechanical cotton picker. The impact of this technology was powerful enough to offset the effect of many other changes in the system.

Closing the Gap: Forty Years of Economic Progress for Blacks.

Forty years ago Gunnar Myrdal assessed the economic situation of blacks in America as pathological. The 40-year record clearly points to a significant and quantitatively large improvement in the relative economic status of black men. In 1940 the typical black male earned around $4500 (in 1984 dollars); a similarly employed black male earned almost $19000 by 1980. The typical black male worker in 1940 earned only 43% as much as his white counterpart; by 1980 the figure was 73%. Whether distinguishing between low or middle-income blacks between the old and the young or the more or less educated the incomes of black men have risen relative to comparable whites. The data show simultaneously the persistence of black poverty the growth of the black middle class and the emergence of a nonnegligible black upper class. The growth in size of the black middle class is so spectacular that as a group it outnumbers the black poor. The 2 dimensions of education that closed the racial wage gap are the narrowing of educational disparities between the races and the improving economic return to black schooling. Southern black migration to Northern cities increased black-white male wage ratios by 11-19% between 1940 and 1980 but the income gains from migration were largely exhausted by 1970. After 1970 the wages of both black and white men increased faster in the South than in the rest of the country. The introduction of the mechanical cotton picker caused a sharp decline in the demand for a largely Southern black labor force in cotton and gave additional impetus to the migration of young Southern blacks to the North. The increasing tendency of many middle-aged black men to drop out of the labor force is an important and neglected social problem. Affirmative action resulted in a radical reshuffling of black jobs in the labor force. Unfortunately its ability to raise the incomes of black men has proven to be far more difficult to achieve.

Southern Agrarian Labor Contracts as Impediments to Cotton Mechanization

The traditional view of cotton mechanization, first advanced by rural sociologists in the 1920s, is that southern agrarian institutions impeded progress. Recently their view has been questioned. New studies attribute much of the southern lag to factors like small-scale production, cheap labor, the cotton crop, and environment. I contribute to the debate by emphasizing how the structure of the southern economy encouraged landlords to use annual labor contracts that hindered attempts to mechanize. I present evidence that supports the traditional view and suggest how the incentive structure of annual labor contracts delayed invention of the mechanical cotton picker.

Labor for the Picking: the New Deal in the South

During the Great Depression of the 1930s southern landlords began to replace sharetenants and mules with wage laborers and large-scale preharvest machinery. Informed observers in the 1920s did not expect this to happen until the advent of the mechanical cotton picker, which came after World War I. This paper presents evidence supporting the claim that the AAA policies of the 1930s, and the economic depression they were designed to cure, induced this tenant displacement by increasing the asset value of land rights without securing tenants a share right, and by relaxing the harvest labor constraint that had previously impeded mechanization.

The Mechanical Cotton-Picker, Negro Migration, and the Integration Movement

Two viewpoints about the integration movement seem to predominate within the larger society. The more dominant one is that the recent integration movement, dating from about 1955, resulted from slow changes in the geist or weltanschaung of Negroes as well as many whites, which reached a threshold in the mid-50's and boiled over. This viewpoint is more often implicit than explicit. It is implied in phrases such as, Freedom now, and We have waited long enough. It is implied in the white Southerners' attribution of the Negro problem to those outside agitators

BIOCHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF COTTON LEAVES AND THEIR CHEMICAL DEFOLIATION AS AFFECTED BY ENVIRONMENT

Induced defoliation of cotton became a necessity with the perfection of the mechanical cotton picker. Fortunately, a defoliant and some knowledge of its effectiveness was already available as a result of research to prevent boll rot in rank cotton (7). GULL (4) reported on the use of calcium cyanamide to remove the leaves from cotton plants to reduce the amount of leaf trash and stain in mechanically harvested cotton, and also, to reduce damage from certain insects and diseases that decrease production and lower the grade of lint cotton (5). The initial field trials for induced defoliation were extremely successful and a solution to the problem was thought to have been found. In subsequent years, however, it was soon found that effective defoliation was dependent upon the status of environmental factors (6); the physiological condition of the leaf, at the time the defoliant is applied, becomes the determining factor in causing abscission. Many field experiments have been conducted to determine the extent to which variation in different phases of the environment occasions alteration in the efficiency of chemical defoliation. From such studies it has been determined that vegetative-reproductive balance, moisture availability, and nutrient level each play a definite role in the efficiency of the defoliation process. EATON and RIGLER (2) report that a low concentration of carbohydrates in the cotton plant is responsible for much of the physiological shedding of small floral buds. Later, EATON and ERGLE (1) found that drought appeared to depress carbohydrate utilization to a greater extent than it did photosynthesis with the result that water deficit greatly increased the carbohydrate concentration within the cotton plant. The following experiment was designed to determine the influence that variation in boll load, moisture availability, and nutrient supply would have upon defoliation and to investigate the associated biochemical status of the leaves. The study was carried out under greenhouse conditions so that other variables, besides those specifically controlled, could also be held relatively uniform. The investigation was designed as a factorial experiment in order to allow for statistical evaluation of each variable and its influence upon the other variables in the study.

The Role of Agricultural Technology in Southern Social Change

IN DISCUSSING the role of agricultural technology in Southern social change, we need first of all to recall that cotton and tobacco, the farmels main sources of cash in the South, are two of the least mechanized crops in the Nation. Hand labor plays the major part in both of them. Axes, mattocks, hoes and simple oneand twohorse plows are standard equipment. The typical tobacco farmer uses no implements or tools more complicated than a mercury thermometer and the one-row fertilizer distributor-and much fertilizer is still put in the row by hand. The cotton farmer's implements have been a one-horse seed planter, a one-horse fertilizer distributor, and scales to weigh up the cotton at picking time in the fall. Sugar cane, too, has traditionally been planted and harvested by hand operations. Cotton gins, cotton oil mills, textile mills, tobacco factories, and sugar cane mills have always looked like projections of another kind of world into the southern countryside, and that is exactly what they are. The mechanization of cotton ginning, spinning, and weaving got under way in the early 1800's; the manufacture of sugar from cane juice was already well established; and over half a century ago the manufacture of chewing and smoking tobacco was becoming big business. We need then, first of all, in thinking about the social effects of current technological development in southern agriculture to make certain that we understand our base lines-namely, the production in the field by hand methods of crops which have for many decades now been processed upon leaving the farmer by big machines and mass production methods, which are in harmony with the rest of the national economy. No farm machinery or techniques are in sight to do more than merely reduce the hand labor in tobacco growing, but the outlook for mechanization in the cotton and sugar cane crops is another matter. The tendency of farmers to produce these crops by the traditional hand methods will be offset in considerable part by the immmediate economic advantages in the use of machines. More tractors are being purchased. The mechanical cotton picker is now in an advanced stage of development, and some of these machines are already in use in the Mississippi Delta. The use of the mechanical cane cutters has been increasing and seems likely to spread further. The gains in mechanization thus promised may go far toward solving some of the South's old economic and social problems. And as a part of the process they would create some very important new problems.

Mechanical cotton picker

The economy and society as we know is constantly changing. One of the key drivers of this change is digital transformation. Digital transformation is based not only on the internet but above all on the latest digital technologies that have become an integral part of our lives. They affect not only our society and economy but also transport industry. The process of digitalization has created opportunities for new products, technologies and processes. On the other hand, digitalization or so called digital disruption has brought threats with it. This threats, like in every other industrial revolution are in the form of new challenges for employers and employees. Digital technologies as well as digital services change the rules of employment and the requirements of competences, knowledge, skills and attitudes of employees. Beginning to promote online work platforms, changing local and global labor markets. Based on this facts, the aim of this paper is to analyze, define and characterize the impact of digital technologies on the labor market and its potential impact in the field of transport labor market.