What You Wear Matters

I’m a bit smitten with cotton. To me, there is something so magical about the moment those bolls pop wide open, and an entire field turns white—like the Lord himself spread a quilt of snow across the Georgia landscape. For me, it ranks right up there with a field of big yellow sunflowers—two of nature’s finest shows.

My love affair with cotton goes way back. When I was five or six years old, my family would visit my grandparents, Henry and Maggie Lanier, who lived just north of Metter in the Union Community off Rosemary Church Road. Sometimes the field right next to their farmhouse was planted in cotton, and I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I’d wade out into the middle of that field and just stand there, surrounded by all that white, picking bolls and stuffing them into my pockets to carry back to the house. Then I’d spend a happy little while sitting on their porch and rubbing those soft fibers against my face.

Even now, when I’m traveling through Candler, Tattnall, or Toombs County and I spot a big stretch of white cotton along the road, I can’t help myself—I pull over and take a picture with my phone. When my mother is riding with me, that always prompts her to talk about picking cotton as a little girl some eight decades ago.

“It was much taller back then,” she says. “Higher than our heads.”

She’s right. Cotton plants once grew tall and viny, towering over the people who picked it, which may be where the expression “high cotton” comes from. Today, modern plant breeding has shifted things considerably. Farmers now aim for plants between 30 and 45 inches tall. Keeping them shorter redirects the plant’s energy away from stems and leaves and straight into producing bolls. It’s smart farming.

I recently spoke with Taylor Sills, who heads up the Georgia Cotton Commission over in Perry, and I learned all sorts of stuff I didn’t know. Georgia ranks second in U.S. cotton production, trailing only the massive state of Texas. There are 3,200 cotton producers right here in our state, with 53 or 54 gins to process the harvest. Last year alone, Georgia produced 1.7 million bales (480-pound bales) of upland cotton, and 80 percent of that was exported worldwide.

And that dollar bill in your pocket is 75 percent cotton. U.S. currency is a blend of cotton and linen, continued from page

which is why it survives the washing machine and can withstand folding and unfolding without tearing.

And Crisco? That old Southern kitchen staple started out as crystallized cottonseed oil. Procter & Gamble introduced it in 1911 as a plant-based alternative to lard and butter, and Southern cooks never looked back. Crisco’s name is derived from the “crys” in crystallized and the “co” in cottonseed.

Before we wrapped up, Taylor Sills asked me for a favor. He said that too many of today’s clothes and home goods are made from polyester and synthetic materials—essentially plastic—and most of those materials are manufactured overseas. “When your readers go to the store,” he said, “ask them to choose cotton. What they wear matters.”

Consider it done, Taylor. Consider it done.

Buy plant-based fabrics, not plastic-based fabrics, if you can, y’all. Our Georgia cotton farmers sure will appreciate it.