Research. As part of my research I have been examining cotton farming today. I have interviewed a cotton farmer who cultivates a large acreage of his own land and land he has leased from others. I have also interviewed two men who grew up working in their family fields before mechanization and who contrasted the practice then and now. Now, up to twelve rows can be cultivated and harvested at a time. The boll weevil has been conquered. Because of global warming, new strains of cotton have been developed.
Video. Cotton Economy: Spirit 2. This video shot from within the Scott-Bradford Cemetery (the next plantation over from Klein) is of a mechanized cotton harvest in 2019. The cotton field abuts the cemetery. The mode of harvest is in sharp contrast to that of antebellum and early 20th century times, when people tilled and harvested the fields, enslaved people during the antebellum period which is evoked by Cotton Economy: Spirit 1.