cotton road 棉花之路

On November 24 I had the great luck to meet Jordan Lea and his partner Phil Canale in Greenville.  Jordan and Phil are cotton merchants and run Eastern Trading Company.  I spent most of the morning learning about cotton pricing and the global cotton trade from Jordan.  He shared a lot of comparative figures between the US and China, including the extraordinary growth and decline in cotton production in China and the US:  In 1998 China grew 21 million bales and in 2008 they grew 51 million bales.  In these same time frame, the US grew 11.4 million bales and this year only 4.4 million.  In the last 10 years there has also been a reversal in the amount of US cotton that is exported– now, most of it leaves the United States. Cotton consumption is also falling or at a complete stand still in some cases due to the global economic slow down.

In the afternoon we filmed some with Jordan as he talked with his future’s broker in California about the enormous drop in cotton prices and worked with Phil to negotiate some orders.  Jordan also exchanged instant messages with a partner in Pakistan.  I learned a great deal about prices, how futures work, and began to gain some insight into global trade.  The great news for Cotton Road is that Jordan has a contact in China who receives all the cotton that is brought through the Port of Shanghai for inspection.  Her name is Aurora Xie and she will be such an important person to me in China; Carl Brown’s bales of cotton will have to go through her before they are sent on to a mill. If it weren’t for Jordan’s help I would not be able to follow the cotton as closely as it now seems possible to do.

Jordan also told me about a folk artist in Georgia who paints rural cotton scenes onto tin.  His name is Leonard Jones. A piece of Leonard’s was hanging in the Eastern Trading offices, a close up image of a figure with bowed head and a large hat, picking through a bushel of cotton. I can easily envision Leonard’s work on a poster or other visual material for the documentary.

This weekend in Bennettsville was one of the coldest on record in South Carolina for late fall.  It was in the teens in the morning both days with a cutting wind.  I arrived in Bennettsville on the 21st of Nov. late in the morning and harvest had not yet begun due to the wetness of the cotton and frozen water lines in the picker.  I worked all day between the field and the gin; the wind was howling and my hands were not as nimble due to the cold and wind. Thankfully the sun was shining brightly both days, and if I stood behind or next to a cotton module it was somewhat possible to warm up.  On this weekend the farm workers were wondering if they would have Thanksgiving off or if they would spend the day in the fields. They had about 5 or 6 days left to go and rain was forecast for the week ahead.  Most of the workers indicated to me that they wanted to keep going, to get it done no matter what.  

On the morning of November 22 picking was also delayed because of extremely cold weather and frozen water lines.  We waited in the shop near a propane heater until late morning when the equipment finally thawed out.  My regret about Saturday is that I did not have time to talk to James again.  He was working so hard running the picker back and forth across the field.  Towards the end of the day I felt sick and I had a bad migraine, but I stayed until sundown.  It was incredibly frigid when I left but picking continued unabated.

I traveled back to Cameron Gin yesterday for a little more filming with Andrew Cline (Production Assistant). Andrew made great still portraits of all the workers at the gin; he’s working on an album of the workers we’ve met on this project that I can take to China. It was great to be back at the gin so soon after the big shoot on Saturday.  The gin workers are curious about my project and all agreed to portraits and to more filming.  Not all of the workers speak good English and neither Andrew nor I speak Spanish, so I interviewed one worker and asked him about the entire crew.  They are seasonal workers from Texas and one of them has been coming to the Cameron Gin for at least 15 years.  Every year he returns with his brother and with a crew.  I happened to notice that someone had posted a hand made calendar for November and December, to count down the days until the workers are able to drive back to Texas for Christmas.  The calendar ends on December 20, the day I leave for China.  

There is a lot of cotton this year– it is one of the best crops in years.  The terrible news is that cotton prices have fallen rapidly from a high of .90 this summer to .39 (as of this posting).  Farmers in South Carolina have produced a gorgeous crop that they will probably get nothing for, and they produced it at a time when inputs (fuel, fertilizer) were extremely high. Everyone is nervous now: the price paid to farmers may not cover their bills, and it’s unclear how much cotton will be purchased by mills next year. Due to the global economic situation, mills are not buying at the moment. The fear everyone has is warehouses full of cotton that won’t move.

On November 7 Mark Gamble (second camera) and I spent the day shooting the cotton harvest on Carl Brown’s farm near Aiken, South Carolina.  We shot on three different fields over the course of the day, spending the majority of our time in a couple of fields on Montmorenci Road and finishing on a very large field called the Middle Field. Carl Brown and his partner Grover, along with Grover’s son Grover Jr., each worked a machine:  Grover drove the cotton picker, Carl drove the cotton buggy, and Grover Jr. packed the cotton into the module builder. Together they worked nonstop until sundown at 6 PM.  The weather was perfect:  sunny and warm.  The sight of cotton boles in full bloom in a field is astonishingly beautiful– and every farmer will tell you this.  

On Saturday we went to Cameron, South Carolina to Cameron Gin to film Carl Brown’s cotton being ginned.  Moss and Drake Perrow, the owners of the gin, had already been hauling Mr. Brown’s cotton from Aiken for at least two weeks.  In fact, they had been stacking his cotton on their farm and holding it for me until I was ready to come to Cameron to film.  They had 12 or more modules at their own farm and several on site at the gin.  The gin’s truck driver hauled several modules from Aiken twice on Saturday but he didn’t want to be filmed doing this, so Mark and I stayed at the gin and filmed with Moss Perrow and about a dozen workers as they ginned Carl Brown’s cotton all day long.  By the time we left I believe they had ginned about four or five of his modules into many bales of cotton, each one marked with a PBI tag containing a special number that will allow the gin and his merchant to keep track of the bale and assign it characteristics that will rate its quality.  As each bale comes out of the gin’s press, a sample is also taken from the bale and sent to a classing lab in Florence, South Carolina.  I hope to see Mr. Brown’s cotton samples classed on Tuesday this week.  Pictures will be posted soon.  Tomorrow I’ll return to Cameron in the afternoon to gather a few more interviews and photographs of all the workers.  Andrew Cline, Production Assistant on Cotton Road, is taking portraits of all the workers we’ve met since early May so that I have an easy way to introduce workers in China to the workers that grew the cotton they are turning into products.

This is the first blog post of many to come that will document my journey from South Carolina to China.  I am producing a film about the global movement of the commodity of cotton as it passes through the hands of workers from field to gin to shipyard to factory to consumer.

I know what at least two or three of you are thinking:  ”yeah, I used to read Laura’s blog and it was pretty boring.  Nothing ever happened.”  Indeed, my last post was in February of 2008; due to inactivity and no software upgrades, my blog was hacked.  But I’m starting over and with a purpose this time. 

Ideally, this blog would have started on May 1 when I showed up in Bennettsville, SC for the first time to shoot cotton planting on the Lynch farm.  Or at least by mid May when I scrounged another camera to film on the Carl Brown farm in Aiken, SC.  Most of the summer I begged and borrowed equipment, which did slow me down; by early September I finally had my own camera.  I’ve been shooting since then, at least twice a month, on both farms through the duration of the cotton season.  The people collaborating with me to make this film are an extraordinary group: farmers, gin operators, farm laborers from South Carolina and Texas, agriculture extension workers, and cotton merchants.  I hope to introduce some of them to you here before I depart for China.