Word: hopsons
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...Hopson experiment was not an unqualified success: the machine picking, less selective than hand methods, produced a poorer grade of cotton. But Business Week reported last week that the saving in labor costs more than made up for the loss in quality...
...Leaf-killing dust. A prime drawback in mechanical picking is that leaves get collected along with the cotton. To get cleaner cotton, the Hopson plantation, before harvesting, defoliated the plants with cyanamid dust dropped from a plane...
...Hopson's Picking. The scene was a 28-acre field on the 4,000-acre plantation of the Hopson Planting Co. International Harvester Co. mechanical pickers, including an experimental model that picked two rows at a time, trundled up & down the white lanes, plucking the bolls clean. Mounted on tractors with big wheels that straddle the rows, these machines have rotating drums with small spindles that pull the cotton tufts from the plant...
Picking is only one of several tough problems in machine cultivation. Other devices used on the Hopson plantation...
...Cleaning cotton seed before machine planting. After ginning, the seed has a fuzzy nap that makes seeds stick together; planting these clusters by machine makes "chopping" (thinning), necessary when the plants come up. The Hopson farm eliminated chopping by de-fuzzing the seeds so they could be planted singly...