Minimizing Farm-to-Mill Cleaning Cost for Irrigated and Dryland Cotton

By employing survey and simulation techniques, this research identifies the least cost cleaning configurations across the harvesting, ginning, and textile mill stages of cotton processing. Given the standard textile mill technology, the least cost cleaning configurations were found to include the use of low trash producing cultivars in the harvesting stage and one lint cleaning in the ginning stage for the best quality of yarn for both irrigated and dryland cotton. For the second and third best quality of yarn, the least cost cleaning configuration was found to include the use of medium trash producing cultivars in the harvesting stage and one lint cleaning in the ginning stage again for both irrigated and dryland cotton. It was determined that if the recommended cleaning configurations are employed, the cotton industry could save between $7.78 and $7.40 per bale of irrigated cotton and $7.30 and $7.26 per bale for dryland cotton, depending on the desired yarn quality