Out of Necessity Comes Invention

John Rust, according to most accounts, was the man credited with the invention of the first successful mechanical cotton picker. Rust put his picker on public display in 1936 at what would later become the Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville, MS.

As a boy growing up in Texas, Rust had hand-picked cotton and believed that one day he could invent a machine that would put an end to the back-breaking practice.

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But his dream-come-true was not met with whoops and cheers of glee. Anything but. In fact, The Jackson (MS) Daily News in an editorial said Rust’s picker should be driven from the cotton fields and sunk into the Mississippi River. Unlike today where labor is a premium, it was feared that the mechanical cotton picker would put millions – yes, millions – in unemployment lines.

Six years after Rust’s successful trial run, Fowler McCormick, chairman of the board of International Harvester, announced that his company had a mechanical picker ready for commercial production. In 1943, the first one ran on Hopson Plantation near Clarksdale, MS. According to MapQuest, that’s 64 miles slightly northeast of where Rust ran his picker in 1936.

McCormick’s International Harvester later evolved into Case IH and the first on-the-go, module-building picker – the Case IH 625 Module Express – made its debut on Kenneth Hood’s farm near Gunnison, MS, during the harvest season of 2006, and was commercially available in 2007. Again according to MapQuest, that’s about 60 miles slightly northwest of Stoneville.

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A Triangle of History

To say the least, a lot of cotton-picking history was made in that triangle in the Mississippi Delta.

This past spring, the Deere version of an on-the-go, module-building picker – the John Deere 7760 – became commercially available.

On the day Case unveiled its new picker, Hood said, “We used to run 12 cotton pickers with 12 drivers. We had 12 module builders, with 12 tractors hooked to them, with 12 drivers. We had a Mule Boy (boll buggy) for each picker – so that was 12 more pieces of equipment, with 12 tractors hooked to them, and 12 more drivers.”

“To run those 12 pickers that I use 45 to 60 days a year takes 36 people, 24 tractors and 24 other pieces of equipment.”

Hood actually began thinking about a less labor and equipment intensive way to harvest in 1996 and his inspiration was a hay baler. Most hay balers on the market today create round bales.

Hood wondered why the principle wouldn’t work with cotton. So did Jimmy Hargett of Bells, TN, and his famous sketch of one on the concrete floor of his farm shop has appeared in almost every farm publication. Engineers at Case IH were thinking, too. What they came up with was a picker that created one-half-sized conventional modules.

Ironically, it was Deere that would perfect a picker that would create round modules on-the-go that looked like round hay bales.

An economic study by Dr. Greg Ibendahl, a Mississippi State University agricultural economist, presented at a 2008 Cotton Incorporated Conference, showed that each picker had the potential to eliminate $22 per acre in equipment and labor.

In 2006, Hargett said, “It’s the future. No doubt about it. The basket picker will become obsolete.”

John Rust dreamed of making hand-picking obsolete and proved that it could be done. Fowler McCormick made mechanical picking commercially viable, and now Case IH and Deere have taken the quantum leap.

Out of necessity comes invention.

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