High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta

High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta I've been fascinated by the Mississippi Delta since reading "Rising Tide: The Great Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America" by John Barry. The ways this relatively isolated and incredibly fertile region have influenced America are diverse and wide-ranging: literature and music (The Blues and Faulkner); political and legal (the Civil Rights Movement;Parchman State Prison) and agricultural (cotton and more cotton) To say "High Cotton" is a book about raising cotton is like saying "Moby Dick" is about hunting for whales. There are the facts, of course, like the fascinating history of the Cotton Weevil and the gradual elimination of DDT because of environmental considerations raised by Rachel Carson. But there is much more here: the Southern male culture of bird hunting and catfish "noodling," Bud Lite and Nascar; and the lives of the black sharecroppers, basically unchanged since the Civil War. This is a liesurely, fond look at a vanishing way of life. Suggestions for Further Reading: The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice RISING TIDE: THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI FLOOD OF 1927 AND HOW IT CHANGED AMERICA

High Cotton is a fine book, enjoyable and interesting reading. It is hard to believe a non-fiction description of cotton planting could be recreational reading but the author pulls off the feat; blending descriptions of the actual farming activities, flash-backs to the role of cotton in American history, the financial pressure planters deal with, to the after-work social activities of the planter. You feel you know the people, feel the hot sun, hear the equipment, ride in the truck and taste the cold beer when the planters take a day off.

Well written, and easy to read,. The historical data is incredible and more than I learned in school, but written to make one want to learn more and ask questions at the end. Truly insighful book written with compassion and caring of the Delta people .

This is a powerful and moving book. Shallow people see it as a book about cotton farming or the tragedy of small farmers or as another opportunity to say stupid things about a place they have never been. As a person who is offended by revisionist histories about the South, but who was deeply rooted in the Delta, I can tell you that if you think William Faulkner was a regional author, don't read it. It is gently written and tells a story of a good man in a struggle with fate and destiny. There is no villan, no antagonist to shoulder blame and guilt. This is not a story of Biblical Job or of virtue. It is however an account of people like anyone who run a small honest business, who strive and are defeated by circumstance. There is no one to hate and few to pity. I suppose some aberrant people will be offended by the racial issues they may read into it, but to assume there are any is a figment. Simply put, they aren't there unless not showing up for work after being stabbed with a pair of scissors is racist. Many people, liberal arts types, are not well enough educated to read this book with compassion. Pity them. The prose is relaxed, the historical facts well done and eclectic. The author has produced an American Classic comparable to Steinbeck and yes, Faulkner.

"High Cotton" follows a Mississippi cotton farmer through a year of planting, growing, and harvesting cotton. Along the way readers learn of how new technology is used, decisions made about seed choices, herbicides and pesticides, etc., as well as considerable background about cotton in the U.S. Even today, without slavery, the U.S. remains the world's leading exporter of cotton, claiming 40% of the world's market. Absent this single crop and its demand for slave labor, the past 200 years of American life would have been unimaginably different. Today's growers no longer face the frequent threat of raging flood waters, and the federal government assumes much of the risk in growing cotton. Sophisticated machinery and potent chemicals perform work once done by humans - as a result, the Delta has been losing population for nearly a century. Even the cotton plant itself has been genetically modified to resist pests and herbicides. In the Mississippi Delta (a misnomer - actually located in the state's Northwest corner), topsoil deposited over the millennia ranges up to 350 feet deep. The river itself descends an average 3" per mile, is over a mile wide in places, and up to 100 feet deep. The Mississippi carries 5 tons of silt per second to the Gulf of Mexico. Helferich follows a relative (Zach) for a year as he cultivates 1,000 acres of cotton. Two bales/acre is the average in the Delta; Zach got 3 last year (1,250 lbs.) Some years suffer from too much rain, lowering the quality to a level where the cotton is only suitable for stuffing furniture. The average farm in the area now grows 4,000 acres. Prices are lower than 25 years ago, while costs have risen (land rents for an average of $100/acre). Cotton farmers are aided by $4 billion/year in federal subsidies - money that h as become the target of those wanting to reduce federal spending as well as foreign cotton sources. "High Cotton" tells us that Zach can work his land now with 2 full-time and 2 part-time employees, instead of the dozens that would have been needed 100 years ago. His tractors provide 250 h.p., cost $125,000, weigh up to 10 tons, and have 15 forward gears. Zach's prior experience as a John Deere mechanic is invaluable in getting through a typical day. A slave could pick an average of 200 lbs. of cotton/day, or alternatively provide 1 pound of cleaned cotton (seeds represent 2/3 of its initial weight). Then the new cotton gins with three workers and a horse could process 1,000 lbs./day, creating 300 lbs. of usable fiber. (Patent disputes left little net gain for inventor Eli Whitney; he later achieved economic success through standardizing and simplifying the manufacture of muskets - possibly an even greater long-term contribution to the U.S.) Genetically-modified seed costs about $72/acre, and Zach can plant 150 acres/day, the depth depending on the type of soil and its moisture content. Slaves generally represented the bulk of antebellum plantation-owners'