An economic evaluation of alternative planting patterns for cotton in Tennessee

When Europeans came to the New World, they did not generally find cotton in America. However, they did find a cotton fiber plant in the tropics. This plant and species from the Old World were quickly introduced into what is now the Southern United States. Cotton became the number one cash crop for this area and still remains so for most of the states in this region. The value of Tennessee's cotton crop has exceeded the value of other individual crops eighteen out of the last twenty years. The two years when cotton yielded its position as number one were IShS and 1950 when cotton ran a close second to tabacco. Table I shows the value of the Tennessee cotton crop has exceeded one hundred million dollars nine of the years from 195k to 1965 with a value of $109,556,000 in 1965. During this same period, there was a decrease in allotted cotton acreage from 681,000 acres to 547,000 acres. However, per acre yields increased sufficiently to give rise to a general increase in total cotton production as shown in Table I.