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A recent Chinese-African cotton agreement could usher in a new era for the African cotton industry -- but not in the short-term, say industry experts. Under the agreement, signed in December with four key cotton-producing African countries -- Benin, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso (known as the C4) - China stated it would provide machinery, expertise and materials in a bid to increase and improve the quality of local production. At the signing ceremony in Geneva, Chinese commerce minister Chen Deming suggested this was a step towards outsourcing production to Africa. "In [the] longer term, we may relocate some of...

You may soon feel the financial sting as soaring cotton costs work their way from the cotton fields, to the textile mill, to the apparel manufacturer, to the retailer, and finally to that new pair of pants or dress you’ve had your eye on...

The table displayed immediately below is likely to surprise even our most-jaded readers. It shows the astronomical increase in cash prices for well-known food commodities over the past 12 months. With inarguable exactness, it contradicts the nearly constant prattle in the mainstream press that inflation is under control, or that it is peaking and likely to come under control sometime soon. Some items on the list have doubled -- even tripled -- in price over the past year. Others have risen at mere double-digit rates.

Guess what? Dollar bills are made of cotton The record run-up in cotton prices is making it more expensive to make T-shirts, socks and -- get this -- even dollar bills. By Parija Kavilanz, senior writerMarch 8, 2011: 9:26 AM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Sure, packs of T-shirts and socks are getting expensive because of skyrocketing cotton prices. Guess what else is made of cotton? The dollar bill in your wallet. In 2010, the cost of making one note jumped 50% from what it cost the government in 2008. The government produced 6.4 billion new currency notes last year....

Within the next few months, Pisgah Yarn & Dyeing will effectively shut down its operations in Old Fort. Jack Lonon Jr., president of the family-owned company, told The McDowell News on Thursday that the company’s assets will be sold to Spinrite Yarns of Canada. The sale will become final on Feb. 25. After that, the future of the business will be uncertain.

Anyone who has been out holiday shopping knows there are some great deals on clothing. “I’m amazed at the sales right now,” one enthusiastic shopper said. However, experts say once the holidays are over, so are the deals. The problem is the price of cotton. Bad weather last year in India, Pakistan and China destroyed thousands of acres of cotton fields which slashed the global cotton supply. “Cotton is up 70 percent in the last year, which is phenomenal,” explained Babson College Professor Peter Cohan. Cotton is a staple in the fashion industry. Think about it, jeans, T-shirts and many...

Consumers itching for new jeans, pricey dress shirts or other cotton-heavy goods might want to pay especially close attention to this year’s holiday sales. Although the rising cost of cotton hasn’t hit shoppers yet, clothing companies have said prices will start climbing as early as January. Bad weather in cotton-producing regions of India and China, and flooding in Pakistan, resulted in poor harvests this season, driving cotton prices up nearly 80% since the summer. So far, most clothing makers haven’t passed that cost increase along to consumers. But in recent weeks, the parent companies of a variety of brands –...

At its Annual Meeting in Sao Paulo/Brazil the International Textile Manufacturing Federation (ITMF) expressed its concern about the soaring cotton prices and their negative implications for the international cotton textile value chain from fiber to retail. The ITMF stated that the textile industry all over the world is not in the position to absorb any longer cotton price increases of unprecedented dimensions recorded during the past months without risking its own existence. The ITMF calls upon the retail industry to change its business model to this new business environment of higher raw material prices. During the past 20 years the...

Cotton prices touched their highest level since Reconstruction on Friday, as a string of bad harvests and demand from China spark worries of a global shortfall. The sudden surge in prices—cotton has risen as much as 56% in three months—has alarmed manufacturers and retailers, who worry they may be forced to pass on higher costs to recession-weary consumers. The December cotton contract hit $1.1980 a pound minutes after the opening of trading on the IntercontinentalExchange on Friday. It is officially the highest price since records began back in 1870 with the creation of the New York Cotton Exchange.

As the Gulf Coast continues to experience a "crude awakening" a Texas Tech scientist burns the midnight oil to turn West Texas cotton into the fabric that saves lives. "My lab focuses on cotton for industrial products where the margin will be higher," says Ramkumar. Dr. Seshadri Ramkumar has developed a nonwoven cotton-carbon product called fibertect that can absorb 15 grams of oil per one gram of material. This invention aimed at intervention features a layer of carbon sandwiched between two layers of low-microneer cotton. While the cotton soaks up liquid the carbon traps carcinogenic vapors produced by oil which...

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama talked a lot about "fair trade." Unlike free trade, which is an objective concept, fair trade is vague and provides wiggle room to adjust to the political interests of individual politicians. President Obama's interpretation of fair trade is shaking out, and it entails paying hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars every year to subsidize the Brazilian cotton industry. Sending big bucks to Latin American competitors probably isn't what most Americans consider fair. The genesis of this example of stupid government rests with a Brazilian protest against farm support and export-credit guarantees that U.S....

Just a quick question, that I am pretty sure I already know the answer to, but have a nagging doubt about: Was cotton ever a cash crop in Texas? I keep thinking 'No', but as I said, I'm getting a little voice in my head saying:"it might'a been...". Anyone know the answer?

Crops such as Corn, Cotton and Soybeans Affected If it has seemed like it has been raining unusually often and by quite a bit, you are right. The months during harvest time (August/September/October) are traditionally the driest of year for most locations east of the Rockies, especially across the corn and cotton belts. This season, though, has been an exception. Here is a slide show that shows how the precipitation of these months has compared to normal.

Police in Germany hunted a sinister phantom killer for two years after finding the same DNA at 39 different crime scenes - only to discover that the source was a woman who made the cotton buds used to collect the sample! The case was one of the most puzzling in recent times. Hundreds of detectives in six specialist committees were set to work hunting the ominous female serial killer. But there was no progress, despite investigators finding her DNA at so many crime scenes. The police were stumped. They eventually offered a 300,000 euro reward to find the killer. It's...

New York, NY (CNS) - Singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow will be releasing her own very "Americana" line of denim jeans and shirts in Dillard's department stores on August 15. The multi-Grammy Award winning artist's clothing line, Bootheel Trading Company, is inspired by western and vintage style. The jeans are designed to be eco-friendly, using only fair-trade cotton and denim. Crow has partnered with Western Glove Works for the affordable fashion line. The most expensive jeans is retailed at $69, and the shirts start at $29. The complete Fall '08 collection will be available nationwide at Dillard's branches and some boutique stores...

ood prices have shot up in response to a surge in crop prices. Now consumers should get ready for clothes prices to follow suit. Garment makers are seeing demand shrink as consumers in the US and Europe are cutting back on spending. US cotton consumption is set to fall 6.5% from last year to less than a million tonnes whilst EU consumption is expected to fall 11% to about 460,000 tonnes, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) predicts. At the same time, they are hit by more expensive raw materials and by soaring oil prices, which make their factories more expensive...

In the wake of the heartbreaking story of underground brick factories involving scores of child slaves found in China's Shanxi province, a similar exploitation has emerged: a corrupt cotton factory in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. In a darkened factory chamber several dark-skinned workers surrounded a large pile of contaminated cotton. Some workers lay exhaustedly on the factory's grimy floor, their bodies covered with dark mosquitoes and flies. One of the workers raised his hand, which was dyed black from his labor, and revealed a damaged finger that had been cut off by a machine. Photos of Exploited Workers On July...

It is believed, with some cause, that partisanship is the reason "nothing gets done" in Washington. So what if there was an issue, involving the poorest of the poor, on which there was bipartisan agreement, and still nothing got done? Our most battle-scarred readers will guess immediately what is at issue -- farm subsidies! At the moment, the sun and moon have aligned to form a left-right coalition to raise the lot of some of Africa's farmers. Arguably the greatest misfortune to befall these farmers is their crop: cotton. In the U.S., the lords of King Cotton still have the...

DALLAS (AP) - A teenager has been jailed for more than a year for shoving a teacher's aide at her high school, a case that has sparked anger and heightened racial tensions in rural East Texas. Shaquandra Cotton, who is black, claims the teacher's aide pushed her first and would not let her enter school before the morning bell in 2005. A jury convicted the 15-year-old girl in March 2006 on a felony count of shoving a public servant, who was not seriously injured. The girl is in the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex in Brownwood, about 300 miles from her...

Working in a cotton mill has bright side Nathan Seppa People who work amid bales of raw cotton are less likely to get lung cancer than are people in the general population, a study of Chinese women indicates. While past research has shown that workers in a cotton mill tend to develop shortness of breath, chronic cough, and other health problems, some scientists also noted less lung cancer than they had expected. In the first long-term study to quantify such anticancer effects, researchers tapped into a huge database of Shanghai women who worked in various textile mills. They identified 628...

Legend of the Lamb-Plant Judith J. Ho Library Technician Special Collections National Agricultural Library, USDA Beltsville, MD Through history, science has crystallized from many divergent paths. From Roger Bacon (1214-94) until well into the present century, discoveries were made and lost and made again.1 The word "biology" was not even coined until 1802. It has been said that if there is a moment at which biology began, it must have been 1615, when William Harvey, then the Court physician of Charles I of England, conceived of the heart as a pump, circulating the blood. The idea that a living body...

WASHINGTON — Cotton, for thousands of years one of the most important crops for clothing and shelter, might also become a source of food. A chemical called gossypol makes cottonseed inedible for humans, though some of it is used in feed for cattle, which are less affected by the toxin. Now, researchers at Texas A&M University have genetically modified cotton to produce seeds with little or no gossypol. It's a step they say could help provide valuable protein to millions of people. Their findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Keerti Rathore of...

THEN ...there can be no doubt that opponents of slavery had come to view the South's "peculiar institution," as an obstacle to economic growth. Despite clear evidence that slavery was profitable, abolitionists--and many people who were not abolitionists--felt strongly that slavery degraded labor, inhibited urbanization and mechanization, thwarted industrialization, and stifled progress, and associated slavery with economic backwardness, inefficiency, indebtedness, and economic and social stagnation. When the North waged war on slavery, it was not because it had overcome racism; rather, it was because Northerners in increasing numbers identified their society with progress and viewed slavery as an intolerable obstacle...

CHATTANOOGA - A federal court jury convicted the first public official to face trial on corruption charges from the Tennessee Waltz undercover sting. Hamilton County Commissioner William Cotton, 58, was convicted Saturday on one count of conspiring with lobbyist Charles Love to obtain $4,750 in bribes in return for the commissioner supporting a resolution to benefit E-Cycle, a phony company created by the FBI for the undercover investigation. Cotton also was convicted on one count of attempted extortion, but was acquitted on a second attempted extortion charge. Both charges carry up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine....

Here is the day we have all been waiting for. The "New Year's Day" bowl games are on the day after, but there are some great matchups today. Look at at least 2 upsets....

NAACP And Parents Object To Song About Slavery (Oak Park, MI) -- A song that many feel glorifies slavery in the United States is causing quite a stir in one Michigan community. North Oakland County NAACP President Dr. Eugene Rogers told the "Detroit News" that he can't believe Anderson Middle School students in Oak Park are going to perform the song "Pick A Bale Of Cotton." The student choir is scheduled to perform the song on Wednesday. The parents of an African-American child in the choir have pulled their daughter out of the show in protest.

You can't say that National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern does not enjoy a challenge. Players will have to observe a dress code beginning this season, he has announced. The idea is going over big with the players -- like flood insurance in the Sahara. The code, delivered in a short memo last week, boils down to this: No bling. "Bling," for those of you who are not fortunate enough to have a teenager in your home, is short for "bling bling," a hip-hop term for gaudy jewelry and other forms of showy, ostentatious style. In 2002, "bling bling" joined...

When Walter Horita, a second-generation Japanese-Brazilian, staked his first claim in the raw savannah of Brazil's interior, back in 1984, there were no roads, telephones or running water in this stretch of the state of Bahia. Bandits had just murdered his neighbors and taken their land. Undeterred, the 20-year-old lived under a black plastic tarp as he cleared the first 420 acres of armadillos and anacondas for modest crops of soy and rice. Twenty years later Walter Horita's pilot is flying him in his twin-engine Beechcraft over his 74,000-acre estate, tidy homesteads and blindingly white, high quality cotton fields that...

Just a simple question for my FReepin' frineds: What is the best way to intentionally shrink 100% cotton? I was given two summer dresses for my birthday, both of which are about 1/2 size too large. They are 100% cotton with a pretty tight weave--almost denim to the touch. The directions say to wash cold, tumble dry warm. Help!

Bolled over by alums, Tech backs off on new seal BY ELLIOTT BLACKBURN AVALANCHE-JOURNAL The Texas Tech University System will return cotton's likeness to new designs of the school seal, an administrator said Thursday. Associate Vice Chancellor Lynn Denton, the system's head of marketing, said the school will develop new designs of the school seal that include symbols representing cotton. "We've decided that we are going to put cotton plants back into the seal," Denton said. Alumni became alarmed earlier this week after speculation circulated the Internet that the school was downplaying the Double T logo and removing cotton from...

Cotton stripped from Tech seal BY ELLIOTT BLACKBURN AVALANCHE-JOURNAL Texas Tech may face a fight from cotton farming alumni after the school announced Wednesday it would pluck the symbolic tufts of the West Texas crop from the school seal. The changes are part of a broader marketing campaign to be launched early next year that Tech officials hope will improve the university's national reputation. Chancellor David Smith refuted rumors Wednesday that the school was abandoning its past for the marketing effort. A-J File Photo "It is not undoing tradition, it is not undoing pride," Smith said of the changes. "We...

The World Trade Organization (news - web sites) on Thursday upheld a ruling condemning government help for cotton producers in the United States, saying that many U.S. programs include illegal export subsidies or domestic payments that are higher than WTO rules allow. The WTO appeals body rejected a U.S. attempt to overturn a September 2004 ruling by an independent panel of trade experts, which acted on a complaint from Brazil. Richard Mills, spokesman for Acting U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier, called the decision disappointing. "Negotiation, not litigation, is the most effective way to address distortions in global agriculture," Mills said...

The United States has lost the final round of a high-profile dispute with Brazil over US cotton subsidies. A World Trade Organisation (WTO) appeals body on Thursday upheld an earlier ruling ordering the US to stop the payments to its farmers. The organisation had found in its initial September ruling that the subsidies violated global trade rules. Brazil said the US practice depressed world prices and hurt cotton producers both in Brazil and other countries. The US will now have to bring its cotton subsidies, which wrongly include export credits for producers, in line with global trade rules. Trade talks...

Well, it didn't last long. With the innaguration less than a month behind us, Washington is back to its pork barrel ways. But what might surprise you is who is attacking the President. Ray LaHood, (R-Ill) is none to happy that Bush has decided to scale back farm subsidies and close loopholes that would allow large scale farms to make claims above which are allowed. I am not a farmer, nor have I ever been one, so I don't know the difficulties of making a buck growing crops. But what I do know is that the American people are subsidizing...

Well, it didn't last long. With the innaguration less than a month behind us, Washington is back to its pork barrel ways. But what might surprise you is who is attacking the President. Ray LaHood, (R-Ill) is none to happy that Bush has decided to scale back farm subsidies and close loopholes that would allow large scale farms to make claims above which are allowed. I am not a farmer, nor have I ever been one, so I don't know the difficulties of making a buck growing crops. But what I do know is that the American people are subsidizing...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's cotton and rice farmers, who receive more than $500 million a year in federal farm subsidies, are preparing for a fight over President Bush's proposed subsidy cuts. The president proposed a $587 million budget cut in farm subsidies nationwide. That would most affect the state's farmers of cotton and rice, which have a combined acreage of about 1.2 million acres throughout California. Bush proposed a 5 percent reduction in support payments, a new $250,000 ceiling on payments to individual farmers and an end to loopholes that allow some farmers to claim multiple owners of their farm...

WASHINGTON, Nov 23, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The harvesting was wrapping up across much of the United States this week although rain across Texas and the South kept the cotton harvest behind schedule. The Agriculture Department's weekly crop report said Tuesday the cotton harvest was 72 percent complete compared to the 5-year average of 80 percent. Heavy rain did not halt field work but caused some degrading of the quality. Nevertheless, New York cotton futures were trading about 44 points lower Tuesday. Live cattle futures were up sharply on concerns about mad cow disease and stress on...

Montezuma -- At this time of year, like every fall before, Frank Journey Jr. expects to reap the fruits of his labor, sweat and love. The sowing of cotton seeds each March heralds the start of another planting season. It's an annual rite of spring that transforms the 63-acre Journey family farm into lush summer pastures of green. Summer, of course, gives way to the fall harvest, when Journey, like his father and grandfather before him, collects the white tufts of cotton that blanket the fields. It's a well-worn tradition observed by generations of cotton farmers in Montezuma and surrounding...

GENEVA — Brazil's emphatic win over the United States in a key trade ruling over cotton will send shock waves through world trade talks and embolden those demanding all farm subsidies be slashed, analysts said on Tuesday. The Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), in a confidential decision, told Washington to halt much of the lavish aid it gives the country's some 25,000 cotton farmers, ruling it illegal, sources close to the ruling said. The decision goes to the heart of the debate at troubled WTO negotiations to reform world farm trade, where angry poorer countries argue the massive subsidy schemes...

Condemned Dallas carjacker set to die Thursday07:10 AM CST on Thursday, March 4, 2004Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Frank Meziere had watched a Dallas Mavericks basketball game at a restaurant with a friend and before heading home stopped at a self-service car wash to clean his black Mustang convertible. The 23-year-old Plano stockbroker, a 1996 Texas A&M University graduate, never made it home. His body was found the next day, March 26, 1998, along the side of a road in an industrial area of Oak Cliff, an area of south Dallas. He had been shot in the head 10 times....

HUNTSVILLE - After trying to console his mother, convicted killer Marcus Cotton was executed Wednesday evening for the fatal shooting of a Houston-area assistant district attorney during a robbery attempt 7 1/2 years ago. "Well, Mom, sometimes it works out like this," Cotton said from the death chamber gurney as his mother, who was among the witnesses, watched through a window. "When you are dealing with reality, real is not always what you want it to be." Cotton, 29, a native of the Houston suburb of Missouri City, told his relatives to take care of themselves and that he loved...

Ricardo Sanchez rose from poverty in Starr County to become an Army general RIO GRANDE CITY - When Ricardo Sanchez was 13, he and an older brother told his mother they didn't want to go to school anymore. OK, she said. They could pick cotton instead. "I woke them up at 5 in the morning and sent them off in one of the trucks," said Maria Sanchez, the 77-year-old mother of the highest-ranking military official in Iraq. "They came home and they were very tired, but I just gave them some dinner and told them, 'Go to bed because tomorrow...

During a cross-country drive in July 1989, my car broke down in the Arizona desert sometime around noon. My cat, Miles, who had long, black fur, was not pleased. I managed to find a phone and call a tow truck, and during the long, slow, non-air-conditioned ride to the nearest service station, with Miles panting at my side, I had plenty of time to take in the scenery: row after row of cotton. Since cotton is a water-intensive crop, the middle of a desert seemed a strange place to grow it. Similar oddities can be observed in other arid areas...

During a cross-country drive in July 1989, my car broke down in the Arizona desert sometime around noon. My cat, Miles, who had long, black fur, was not pleased. I managed to find a phone and call a tow truck, and during the long, slow, non-air-conditioned ride to the nearest service station, with Miles panting at my side, I had plenty of time to take in the scenery: row after row of cotton. Since cotton is a water-intensive crop, the middle of a desert seemed a strange place to grow it. Similar oddities can be observed in other arid areas...

Cotton losses staggering on High Plains BY MARY JANE SHORT AVALANCHE-JOURNAL The amount of High Plains cotton acreage lost to adverse weather has sailed past the 1 million mark with counties north of Lubbock hit hardest by the wipeout, recent estimates from Texas Cooperative Extension and Plains Cotton Growers show. Experts say that of 3.6 million acres planted, about 1.18 million have been lost, almost a third of cotton acreage in PCG's 25-county area. Counties sustaining the big gest losses include Bailey, Coch ran, Deaf Smith, Floyd, Lamb and Parmer. All report a 70 percent or greater acreage loss. Earlier...

From hip-hopper to sharecropper Sean Combs His hip-hop majesty Sean Combs wants to pick cotton. The Bad Boy Records boss has been cast to play Delta blues legend Robert Johnson in the HBO movie "Love in Vain." Wasting no time prepping for the part, he's learning some guitar licks. "I tried playing it when I was young," Combs tells us. He's also looking forward to heading down South - where, before he died in 1938 at the age of 27, the vagabond Johnson is said to have made a pact with the devil, who promised to make him the greatest...

Fearless Flyers Kites has shut down production and needs help finding new supplyers After a life time of designing and creating custom hand painted kites Fearless Flyers Kite Company has shut down production due to an inability to find conservative supplyers. Fearless Flyers makes tie dye cotton and hand painted silk kites. This is a one man operation, that has unfortunately been acquiring materials from Dharma Trading Company. The vendor appears to be in the same district as Berkeley California and supports the same ideals, as discovered when an enquiry was made with two different sales people, during the last...