Cook: Cotton a Community Crop 
of being shared with the farmer. 
The more valuable bales contribute to 
the profit of buying and sorting over 
the miscellaneous ‘“‘hog-round lots” 
accumulated by local buyers, many of 
whom do not know how to “class” 
the cotton. 
Failure to give the farmer practical 
encouragement in his effort to improve 
the crop is a serious defect- of the 
present commercial system, but or- 
ganized communities have a standard- 
ized product, better than any of the 
““even-running lots’”’ that can be made 
by sorting and matching the inferior 
fiber of mixed communities so that the 
commercial problems are simplified. 
Even in advance of formal organization 
of communities, a distinct advantage 
may be shown as the one-variety con- 
dition is approached. The general popu- 
larity of the big-boll type of cotton 
in Texas has kept the crop more uniform 
and given that State an appreciable 
market advantage in comparison with 
other parts of the cotton belt. Pre- 
miums of $10 to $20 per bale, are being 
paid in Texas and Oklahoma com- 
munities because so many of the farmers 
grow the Lone Star or Acala varieties 
that buyers compete for the superior 
fiber. Active campaigns for commuhity 
standardization and marketing are in 
progress in Texas, Oklahoma and North 
Carolina.! 
COMMUNITY CHOICE OF ONE VARIETY 
No doubt it will be difficult and 
sometimes impossible to get farmers to 
agree upon one variety as the best for 
their community, though too much 
may be made of this obstacle. Even 
a poor variety will give better results 
with community handling than vood 
varieties mixed together. An organized 
community can change promptly to a 
LNG 
superior variety when a definite ad- 
vantage can be shown. The Pima 
variety was substituted for the Yuma 
in the Salt River Valley in one season, 
after a sufficient stock of seed had been 
raised. Choice of varieties also is 
limited at present by the fact that stocks 
of pure seed are obtainable for only a 
few kinds. The first one-variety com- 
munities in each district will profit 
especially by selling seed to other com- 
munities. Pure seed sells as readily in 
carload lots as in bushels or tons. 
Community organization in the Salt 
River Valley has made possible a rapid 
extension of Pima cotton because a 
larger supply of pure seed is available 
than with any other variety. 
EGYPTIAN COTTON COMMUNITIES IN 
ARIZONA. 
It is appreciated in Arizona that the 
Pima cotton crop of the Salt River 
Valley communities in 1919 returned 
about $20,000,000 or nearly twice the 
cost of the Salt River reclamation 
project, including the Roosevelt dam, 
electric power-plants, and irrigation 
canals. The value of land suited to 
cotton has doubled or trebled in the last 
few years, some of it selling at $500 
per acre. With reduced production in 
Egypt and loss of the Sea Island crop 
through the boll-weevil, the automobile 
tire industry becomes acutely dependent 
upon the Pima cotton raised by the 
Southwestern communities. In the 
spring of 1920 manufacturers are offer- 
ing to guarantee a minimum price of 
60 cents per pound, or to make con- 
tracts at 80 cents a pound, so that a 
very rapid extension of Pima cotton 
may be expected, not only in the Salt 
River Valley, but in the Yuma, Im- 
perial, Coachella and San Joaquin 
Valley.? 
1Winters, R. Y., 1919, Community Cotton Improvement in North Carolina, Journal of the Amer- 
ican Society of Agronomy, 2:121,. 
2See U.S. Dept. Agric. Bul. 533, ‘Extension of Cotton Production in California,’ 
332, “Community Production of Egyptian Cotton in the United States.” 
, 
and Bul. 
The community plan 
in relation to cotton production was outlined in the Yearbook of the U. S. Dept. of Agric. for 1911, 
pages 397-410, under the title ‘‘Cotton Improvement on a Community Basis.” Other papers 
that discuss community features are U. S. Dept. Agric. Bul. 60, ‘‘Relation of Cotton Buying to 
Cotton Growing,” U.S. Dept. Agric. Bul. 288, ‘Custom Ginning as a Factor in Cotton Seed 
Deterioration,’’ U. S. Dept. Agric. Bul. 324, “Community Production of Durango Cotton in the 
Imperial Valley,’ U. S. Dept. Agric. Bul. 742, ‘Production of American Egyptian Cotton,”’ and 
Bureau of Plant Industry Circulars ‘‘Cotton Selection on the Farm by the Characters of the 
Stalks, Leaves and Bolls”’ and “‘Tests of Pima Egyptian Cotton in the Salt River Valley, Arizona.”’ 
