Cotton Gin - See a cotton gin in action to know where your cotton comes from!!

Welcome to this video I made about a cotton gin. In this video I will take you from an overview of the gin yard to the ginning process and machines, all the way to the final bale.

I grew up about 1 mile from this cotton gin in Humphrey's Oklahoma. This gin has changed a lot since I went to see it when I was a kid. Over the past several years, the entire ginning facility has been update with new equipment that has increased efficiency and dependability. This gin is what is called a "Single Stream Gin". This is in reference to the main intake tube that is taking the cotton from the feeder/conveyor system and sending it into the ginning machines. Some larger ginning operations have Dual Streams, pretty much meaning they have double the equipment shown here. In this video you can see what cotton looks like in it's field baled state, dirty and full of leaves, as it starts on the feeder. Then it's dried with hot air as the bale is broken down and then sent to the Stick Machine for it's first cleaning that removes the sticks and burs and most of the leaves. Then it goes to the Gin Stand which separates the cotton lint from the cotton seeds. From here, the lint is processed through Lint Cleaners that remove the remaining leaves and any leftover trash. Then it heads to the Press. At the press, the cleaned cotton is packed into a finished Bale. These bales weigh 480 pounds. They are banded, sampled, bagged, and labelled. Then the bales get loaded onto a semi and taken to their next stop as they move on down the line to eventually be made into clothing. Before it can be sold, and then farmer paid, the sample is sent to Abilene, TX so it can be tested and then graded. Once the grade is assigned, the farmer can sell the bales on the market and get his payment for his last 6-8 months of work!!

Some fun and interesting facts I was reminded about while making this video:
1 bale = 480 pounds
current cotton price of .60 cents/pound means 1 bale is $288 the farmer is paid for selling 1 bale
average cost I found is about $150/bale.
Farms are usually priced in cost per acre, my dad told me average is about $500/acre and makes an average of 2.5 bales/acre.
This means 1 acre of a cotton field costs about $500 to farm, and farmer makes about $720 !!!
Costs to produce usually break down like this:
-1. Land. Prepping the land plowing and marking rows
-2. Fertilizer and Herbicide to prep the land
-3. Plant seeds. Which now must be bought since seed companies hold rights to their seeds and forbid re-using them after harvest!!
-4. more Fertilizer and Insect/Weed control
-5. Water!!! - Usually irrigated land is watered from July to September. Sometimes earlier or later depending on the harshness of the summer
-6. Defoliate = Special chemicals that make the cotton bolls open fully and start dropping their leaves
-7. Harvest - This is usually done with farmer's own machines or paying a custom harvester who goes farm to farm harvesting to cover his costs of the machines
-8. Shred stalks, then start plowing and you are back to step 1 to start it over again next season!!

Cotton Bale interesting facts:
1 Bale can make:
215 pairs of jeans
2,419 pairs of men's briefs
6,436 pairs of women's knit briefs
3,085 diapers
-OR-
313,600 $100 bills!!!
Think of all the money made by companies on these products, then remember the farmer who made it possible only got paid $288 for a bale making those companies thousands of dollars!!!

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- Chad Kelly

Видео Cotton Gin - See a cotton gin in action to know where your cotton comes from!! канала Chad Kelly