AgWired

The Cotton Board is asking you to drop your jeans for a good cause. Their Blue Jean Go Green campaign is a denim recycling program that gives old denim new life as housing insulation for communities in need.

Monty Bain is the Southeast Regional Communications Manager for the Cotton Board and spoke with Chuck at the recent Mid-South Farm & Gin Show.

“We’re taking old jeans and recycling them with a company called Bonded Logic out of Arizona turning them into housing insulation. They have already used them for Habitat for Humanity. They have collected over a million pairs and counting.”

A not-for-profit organization, Cotton Incorporated launched its denim recycling program in 2006 to give people the opportunity to give back to their community in a meaningful way while giving new life to old denim. Through a partnership with Bonded Logic Inc., recycled denim is converted into UltraTouch™ Denim Insulation,a portion of which is given to communities in need across the country (predominantly through Habitat for Humanity affiliates). Additionally, grants of insulation have been awarded for the development of community-based buildings.

People across the country can drop off their old jeans and register for a chance to win a $300 gift card to Cabela’s.

You can listen to Chuck’s interview with Monty here: Interview with Monty Bain

2014 Mid-South Farm & Gin Show Photo Album

Attendance was up at this year’s Mid-South Farm & Gin Show. Tim Price, Executive Director of the Southern Cotton Ginners Association and Mid-South Farm & Gin Show Manager summed up the event with Chuck. He’s proud that farmers make plans to attend the show each year and make it a family affair.

“We don’t have the exact number yet, but we were ahead of last year. We think we will come in somewhere around 18,000 folks who have visited the show over the two-day time period. We always compete with the end of winter and the beginning of the planting season. Here in the south there are people fertilizing winter wheat now. They are anxious after this long winter to get out in the fields and begin tillage and a number of them have. But we find that they carve out time for this.”

Tim gives credit of the record attendance to good marketing and unprecedented years of profitability in American agriculture. He stated that even when the economy is down, people still come out to the show. They are seeking ideas to increase profits and ways to change in order to keep up with technology.

“This region of the country has the assets and the climate to really grow multiple crops. That’s an advantage. In my work representing the cotton ginning sector in the Mid-South, we love to see acreage, we love to see cotton production, we love to see cotton gins. But it’s not economically in the farmers best interest some years. What we have learned is that they are learning constantly how to adjust and adapt to what has really been a decade old process of going toward a market orientation and then an international orientation of our production.”

You can listen to Chuck’s interview with Tim here: Interview with Tim Price

2014 Mid-South Farm & Gin Show Photo Album