Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will tend to increase the dispersion of the seeds.

No one knows exactly how old cotton is. Scientists searching caves in Mexico found bits of cotton bolls and pieces of cotton cloth that proved to be at least 7,000 years old. They also found that the cotton itself was much like that grown in America today.

In the Indus River Valley in Pakistan, cotton was being grown, spun and woven into cloth 3,000 years BC. At about the same time, natives of Egypt’s Nile valley were making and wearing cotton clothing. Arab merchants brought cotton cloth to Europe about 800 A.D. When Columbus discovered America in 1492, he found cotton growing in the Bahama Islands. By 1500, cotton was known generally throughout the world.

Cotton seed are believed to have been planted in Florida in 1556 and in Virginia in 1607. By 1616, colonists were growing cotton along the James River in Virginia.

Cotton production is an important economic factor in the United States as the country leads worldwide in cotton exportation. The US is ranked third in production, behind (1) China and (2) India. Almost all of the cotton fiber growth and production occurs in southern and western states, dominated by Texas, California, Arizona, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

More than 99 percent of the cotton grown in the US is of the Upland variety, with the rest beingAmerican Pima. Cotton production is a $25 billion-per-year industry in the United States, employing over 200,000 people in total, as against growth of forty billion pounds a year from 77 million acres of land covering more than eighty counties. 

The final estimate of cotton production for the year the 2012 in the US is reported at 17.31 million bales, with the corresponding figures for China being 35 million bales and for India, 26.5 million bales.