OCR Text |
Show Cotton Pickers Among New Inventions Mechanical cotton pickers and airplanes to dust cotton fields with chemicals will be industry's contributions to help American farmers to meet foreign competition competi-tion in postwar markets. Planes will scatter an inexpensive inexpen-sive chemical over the fields to defoliate the cotton plants before picking time. The chemical, developed devel-oped through ten yars of research by American Cynamid Co., causes the leaves to fall off the cotton plants, leaving the bolls uncovered for the picker. Defoliation also enables a field workr to pick about 25 more cotton by hand. Picking cotton has hitherto cost from $30 to $45 an acre. Efficient mechanical picking will reduce costs greatly, doing more than government price juggling has done to aid farmers to compete with cotton from countries with lower wage standards. |