MALDEN, Mo. - The hunt for plastic bags didn't take long.
Five minutes down a gravel road in Missouri's Bootheel, cotton farmer Chuck Provance stopped and pointed out his truck window at the neat rows of a recently-harvested cotton field. And there they were: a half-dozen plastic bags fluttering among the remaining cotton stalks like puffs of cotton missed by the mechanical picker.
Those plastic bags, "they will wreak havoc," Provance said.
Plastic bags are more than just an eyesore in the Cotton Belt. A single plastic bag that ends up in the picked cotton can ruin thousands of yards of finished fabric. The cotton industry estimates that so-called lint contamination, which comes from a variety of sources, causes $200 million in losses each year worldwide.
But unlike that traditional threat to cotton, the boll weevil, which is fading, the small threat posed by plastic bags appears to be growing. And the plastic bag problem is stuffed with irony: The same bag that might've carried home a cotton T-shirt or pair of dungarees could end up damaging a new cotton crop.
"You want the shirt to be in the bag instead of the bag being in the shirt," said Bobby Phipps, a cotton consultant.
Avoiding plastic bags is part of the routine in Dunklin County, where cotton is king and the county regularly ranks in the nation's top 10 for cotton production. Provance farms 2,400 acres of cotton here.
"We avoid what we can," Provance said. "But some we can't because everybody's Wal-Mart bags are blowing all over the fields."
Plastic bags are not a major concern during the harvest of other crops, such as wheat or soybeans. And a plastic bag's threat to cotton is unique among other kinds of roadside litter.
It is difficult to detect shredded pieces of plastic bags during the highly automated process that moves cotton from field to finished product. Plastic acts like a cotton fiber. The plastic bits can end up being spun into cotton yarn and woven into fabric. But those bits don't accept color dye, ruining the entire fabric. Tainted cotton is either discarded or sold at a steep discount. The loss is often absorbed by the cotton gin or farmer.
Phipps, who until this summer spent a decade as Missouri's state extension cotton specialist, said he first heard about the problem five or six years ago. "One of the mills in the U.S. had quit buying Southeastern cotton because so many plastic bags kept showing up in the lint," Phipps said.
Despite the problem, American cotton is considered among the cleanest in the world, according to the National Cotton Council, an industry trade group. But the council works to maintain American cotton's reputation in the face of increased competition from overseas growers.
The council has launched an industry campaign to raise awareness about preventing plastic bags, plastic tie-downs, grease and farm engine parts from getting into the picked cotton crop. The effort's slogan: "Cotton: Keep it clean and pure."
"We think the United States in making headway," said Andy Jordan, the council's vice president of technical services. "But whenever there's a highway near a cotton field, unfortunately, people do throw out plastic bags."
That's the part that confounds farmers and officials. Where do all those plastic bags come from?
"I came to the conclusion that people, when they shopped in town at some of the stores, they must look at the merchandise on the way home and throw all the bags out the car window," Phipps said. "Because I don't know how all those bags get there otherwise."
Robbie Seals, U.S. Department of Agriculture cotton grading branch chief in Memphis, said he's noticed plastic bags blowing across the wide-open cotton fields in west Texas. "You wonder where all those bags come from," Seals said.
There are simply more plastic bags today. Plastic has supplanted paper as the bag of choice, accounting for at least 80 percent of the bags at grocery and convenience stores. And then there's the one retailer that can be found in just about every rural area in the country - Wal-Mart, home to distinctive light-blue plastic bags. (Although some Wal-Marts also offer white plastic bags.)
"When you drive home, or next time you're in the country, just look along the highway. You'll be surprised," Phipps said. "You'll be surprised how many of them are light blue. And you know whose bags those are. You can't blame the store. It's the clientele that throws those bags out."
Wal-Mart did not respond to a call for comment.
Sprawl contributes to the litter problem, said Bill Norman, executive vice president of the National Cotton Ginners Association. For example, the suburbs of Montgomery, Ala., have expanded into prime cotton areas and that has led to more litter, said South Bryan, vice president of cotton sourcing for Avondale textile mills, which has operations in three states.
Provance said he's never known a plastic bag to make it into his cotton crop. Over at B&B Cotton Co. in Campbell, Mo., where Provance takes his cotton to be ginned, owner David Blakemore said he runs into the problem only occasionally.
But Blakemore is not taking any chances. He does his part to avoid plastic bags, even when he's out grocery shopping.
"We prefer," he said, "paper over plastic."
