COAHOMA COUNTY, Miss. -- Standing in his farm office with a dusty adding machine on the desk and a decade of receipts tacked to the cypress-paneled walls, Ellington Massey could be mistaken for his father years ago.
But a chemical salesman in a starched shirt shatters the scene with a portable TV and a videotape advertising a new herbicide.
This collision of old and new is a snapshot of how technology and farming practices are dramatically changing the once-timeless trade of growing cotton.
The harvest now under way covers a decade-high number of acres. Most of this year's crop in the Deep South is about average, with yields of 600 pounds to 700 pounds per acre. Experts say increased acreage and a solid market should maintain the rebound from the farm crisis of the 1970s.
In the course of that comeback, how cotton is farmed and the way of life that surrounds it have changed profoundly.
"Farming has gotten to be sophisticated. The ignorant people who are not willing to learn are going to have to phase out," said Mr. Massey, a tanned 51-year-old who took over the farm from his father 30 years ago.
Here in the dark soil of the Mississippi Delta, where cotton fields have been farmed by the same families for generations, it's easiest to see the evolution.
In 1952, for example, Mr. Massey's grandfather farmed 300 acres. At that time, more than 40 people in 11 families lived in tenant houses on the property and worked the fields.
Today, Mr. Massey plants 3,000 acres with only 12 workers, including himself and his son, 24. He still maintains five tenant
houses on the farm, but even that icon of the Delta is vanishing.
"A lot of farmers have decided to let their tenant houses run down and let labor move into these federal housing projects," Mr. Massey said recently as he waited for the morning dew to disappear.
Cotton farming almost disappeared in the revolution of synthetic fibers in the 1970s. But the enduring popularity of denim and cotton's return as a preferred fabric saved it.
Demand has pushed up prices, averaging at least 10 percent above the 1989 price of 63 cents a pound. That means a Delta farmer with an average yield can expect to clear about $100 an acre selling the cotton, says Charlie Estes, Coahoma County extension agent.
