<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Parts of this article (those related to Information about Missouri cotton farming, which earlier researchers / editors evidently intended to include but did not include because of poor formatting, which made the heading hard to see) need to be updated . Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information . (December 2017) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Parts of this article (those related to Information about Missouri cotton farming, which earlier researchers / editors evidently intended to include but did not include because of poor formatting, which made the heading hard to see) need to be updated . Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information . (December 2017) </Td> </Tr> <P> Cotton production is an important economic factor in the United States as the country leads, worldwide, in cotton exportation . The United States is ranked third in production, behind China and India . Almost all of the cotton fiber growth and production occurs in southern and western states, dominated by Texas, California, Arizona, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana . More than 99 percent of the cotton grown in the US is of the Upland variety, with the rest being American 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 countries . The final estimate of U.S. cotton production in 2012 was 17.31 million bales, with the corresponding figures for China and India being 35 million and 26.5 million bales, respectively . </P> <P> Early cotton farming in the United States is synonymous with the history of slavery in the United States . By the late 1920s around two - thirds of all African - American tenants and almost three - fourths of the croppers worked on cotton farms, and two in three black women from black landowning families were involved in cotton farming . Cotton farming was one of the major areas of racial tension in its history, where many whites expressed concerns about the mass employment of blacks in the industry and the dramatic growth of black landowners . Southern black cotton farmers faced discrimination from the north in particular, and strikes often broke out by black cotton farmers . Although the industry was badly affected by falling prices and pests in the early 1920s, the main reason is undoubtedly the mechanization of agriculture in explaining why many blacks moved to northern American cities in the 1940s and 1950s during the "Great Migration" as mechanization of agriculture was introduced, leaving many unemployed . The Hopson Planting Company produced the first crop of cotton to be entirely planted, harvested, and baled by machinery in 1944 . </P>

Where is most cotton grown in the united states