This 90-pound woman who is barely 5-feet-tall described how she could pick 300 pounds of cotton a day, or pull 700 pounds. During the filming of this clip, a Texas state trooper pulled up and asked us what we were doing.

The pullout of cotton from cotton plant balls by hand or by the mechanical method is called the picking of cotton. The medium which is used to collect cotton is called a cotton picker. A cotton picker pulls the lint from cotton balls and leaves the plant as it is.

In the US the two predominant ways to harvest cotton on farms is either using 1) mechanical cotton pickers or 2) using a mechanical cotton stripper. A cotton picker pulling the lint from the plants bracts that hold it on and leaves the rest of the plant as is.

We’ll examine the evolution from hand-picking to mechanization, the types of cotton pickers used today, the harvesting process step-by-step, and the impact of these advancements on cotton production worldwide.

You can hand-pick about 20 plants in 10 minutes while it takes a cotton picker about 30 seconds to pick up to 1,200 plants. If picking by hand, pull the cotton out of the boll using your fingers. If using a machine, be sure to read the instruction manual before operating the picker.