26 27 28_CF 11/13 template 1/20/15 8:45 AM Page 26
COTTON FARMING IS THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE GINNING INDUSTRY.
Gins’ Objective: Doing More With Technology Fall and winter are probably my favorite times of the year. The obvious stuff aside – trees changing, a nip in the air and football – I love the harvest. The time of year where all the work farmers and ginners have done since the last harvest comes together. I love watching the marvels of engineering do what they were designed to do – make money. It’s also a time I wax a bit nostalgic. I think about all that has changed in our industry over the years, and how gins are doing so much more with less. I admit that I don’t get to the field and in the gins nearly as much as I would like to. There always seems to be another article to write, meeting to attend or crisis that needs resolving. However, during the last few years, I’ve made it a point to visit gins during the fall. It never ceases to amaze me the changes in technology year-to-year and the increased rate at which that technology is being adopted. Nostalgia Of Small Gins I’ve been working directly with ginners for about 25 years now, and the area of the country in which I started working had a LOT of small, older gins. These gins ranged from seven bales per hour to 30 bales per hour with an average near the 12- to 15-bale range. The biggest of those gins back then did 30,000 bales or so, and many ginned less than 5,000 bales. Even the smallest gins had 10 to 15 workers for each shift. There are a number of those gins still around, and they provide a GREAT service to their customers and may put out the best samples in the industry. But, the pressures of the economies of scale seem to have taken a toll on those small local operations. As I’ve talked to some of my members in recent weeks and even years, I’ve commented on the technology that has found its way into our business.
26 COTTON FARMING
FEBRUARY 2015
Everything from apps on cell phones to touch screen glass control panels (only a couple of physical buttons to run the whole gin) have become more commonplace. Its just scary. The one thing that almost everyone has told me when I ask about these goodies is that they felt like they had to go this route. Not that they wanted or even needed to gin faster than the guy down the road, but the pressures of labor, quality and availability dictated decisions. Impressive Advancements What used to be handled by two or three gin plants is now handled by one or two gin stands. What previously required 40 buttons (or more) and a good bit of training can now be done with a touch screen and PLCs and very little training – meaning the gin can do more now with less. The one area that has continued to need a lot of labor is the press. It is seeing big changes as well. Over the
past few years, we’ve seen a number of changes in tying bales. Bagging bales and pulling samples have slowly but surely eliminated employees on the press as well as allowed the gin to run more with even less. Now we have 40 or even 60 bale perhour gins being run with less than 10 employees on a shift. A gin that runs 80,000 bales may only have 25 or so employees. When my great-grandfather owned a gin in South Carolina in the 1930s and 1940s, I’m sure he never could have imagined a single gin stand that could process more than the whole county’s production where he lived. Maybe I’m just getting old. In some ways, I do miss the old gins. You could hear the seed roll spinning on the gin saw teeth almost singing. The suck pipe was swinging in a trailer. Then again, I don’t miss banging my head or having to climb over one machine to get to another because everything was shoehorned into a tiny box. If you ever