Approximately 30 percent of the cottonseed's weight is in the hull, or outer covering.
Even today, it is possible to produce a baking flour for human consumption from cottonseed meal.
The problem, however, is that the cottonseed varieties that produce high-quality flour do not produce high-quality lint.
Connoisseurs agree that when it comes to frying chips, cottonseed oil is best.
In fact, gourmet chefs increasingly tout the benefits of cooking with cottonseed oil.
Nelson's cottonseed is trucked from the Shallowater gin to the Plains Cooperative Oil Mill (PCOM), on the east side of Lubbock.
If current research in genetic engineering pays off, cottonseed flour will turn up in the bakery aisle in breads, cakes, and cookies.
The meal of the cottonseed constitutes almost half of the seed's weight.
Cottonseed farmer Talari Babu is a slim, wiry man dressed, when a reporter visited him, in black for a Hindu fast.
The cottonseed, like the bolls and leaves, once had an unprofitable fate as trash, dumped into gullies and streams, or burned in gigantic piles.
Dr. Lance Forster, a scientist at the NCPA, predicts that fish farms may soon consume 10 percent of the production of U.S. cottonseed meal.
The biggest buyer of cottonseed oil in the world is Frito-Lay.
From sunup to sundown she is hunched over in the fields of a cottonseed farm in southern India, earning 20 cents an hour.
The analysis suggests that foreign multinational corporations promoting genetically modified cottonseed in India are impinging on the rights of small farmers in India.
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And in some regions, cottonseed hulls are processed into oil-drilling mud, a sticky, industrial-strength type of Play-Doh that is used to plug leaks in oil wells.
The National Cottonseed Products Association (NCPA) offers recipes such as "Chocolate Banana Bread Pudding with Mascarpone Caramel Cream and Banana Beignets" to anyone who might be interested.
And finally, a ton of cottonseed will contain about 150 pounds of "linters, "which are tiny bits of cotton fuzz that are stuck to the seed after ginning.
Eight thousand pounds of the snowy white module is cottonseed.
Today, the Reinsch cottonseed has much better things to do than stay on the farm, and thanks to the farmers' marketing efforts, it is much too valuable to use as animal feed.
Last year 420, 000 laborers under the age of 18 were employed in cottonseed farms in four states across India, estimates Glocal Research, a consultancy in Hyderabad that monitors agricultural labor conditions.
Ralston-Purina is another major customer for cottonseed meal.
And recently, researchers in aquaculture (fish farming) have discovered that cottonseed meal makes a high-quality fish food.18 Catfish, in particular, appear to love cottonseed meal, and will eat it even when offered fish meal instead.
Because fish stocks throughout the world are falling, driving up the prices of fish meal, and cotton production is rising, driving down the price of cottonseed, feeding cottonseed to catfish works for farmers of both cotton and catfish.
Cottonseed oil is also the primary input in the production of Olestra, a frying fat that glides through humans without leaving a trace of fat or calories, and is also an important source of vitamin E for pharmaceutical producers.
Years later, we oversaw a similar project but in reverse: In 2008, without a government subsidy, we built a wind farm in Lubbock, Texas, to supplement at lower costs the delivery of electricity to a cottonseed-oil company.
"Indian cottonseed producers actually realize almost seven times the financial benefits growing cottonseed for local seed companies than if they were to sell that same yield at farm gate prices"--using their land, that is, primarily to produce cotton rather than seed.
As plant genetics research advances, however, industry scientists hope that it will be possible to breed cottonseed that produces superior flour, high-quality lint, and oil, so that almost every ingredient in a birthday cake can be produced with the leftovers from Nelson's cotton production.
Issufo Nurmamade, the owner of a cotton company called SANAM in the city of Nampula, says he hasn't made a profit on cotton fiber in three years, and his business is only staying afloat because he produces and markets cottonseed oil for the domestic market.
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