Multiple Lint Cleaning at Cotton Gins: Effects on Bale Value, Fiber Properties, and Spinning Performance

Excerpts from the report: The demand from cotton growers for lint cleaning stems directly from the increasing mechanization of cotton harvesting and from their interest in increasing gross returns from their cotton. Compared with hand picking, mechanical harvesting greatly increases the trash content of cotton and alters the nature of the trash. These conditions place a greater burden on gins to put out a high-quality hale of cotton that will bring the highest possible return to the growers. Lint cleaning tends to improve the grade of the cotton, and, therefore, may increase grower's returns more than enough to offset the added costs to ginners and growers. Nevertheless, as the practice of lint cleaning, and particularly multiple lint cleaning, became more common, growers, ginners, manufacturers, and others have expressed serious doubts about its effects on the quality of cotton and about the economic soundness of it. Growers and ginners have raised questions about the effects of lint cleaning on returns to growers and on ginning costs. Manufacturers have expressed doubts about the effects of lint cleaning on the fiber properties of cotton, on the spinning performance of cleaned cotton, and on the quality of yarns made from such cotton. The primary purpose of the study is to evaluate the technical and economic effects of varying stages of lint cleaning on such factors as grade, staple length, bale weights, bale values (returns to growers), costs of ginning, fiber properties, spinning performance, and strength and appearance of cotton yarns.