FROGMORE, La. &045; Picking cotton just isn’t the same anymore.

It’s better.

&uot;It’s easy, just watch the computer in there and make sure (the picker) doesn’t get stopped up,&uot; Sammy King, who runs one of two pickers for Tanner & Co., said.

Modern harvesting equipment and ginning machines have revolutionized the process, something King’s fellow worker Butch Allen knows well as he drives a six-row cotton picker across seemingly endless fields of cotton.

&uot;I’ve got air conditioning, radio. It’s nice,&uot; Allen said. &uot;It has to be to stay in here so long.&uot;

King and Allen have been working with cotton most of their lives in one way or another. They and the other men out in the fields frequently work 15-hour days or longer this time of year. As long as the cotton can be picked, they work.

&uot;As soon as the dew comes off until it goes back on,&uot; Tanner and Co. general manager Don Branton said. &uot;We start at 9:30 or 10 in the morning until 10 at night. If the wind’s blowing and the dew’s not set, we’ll pick until one in the morning.&uot;

After a trip down and back across the field, the pickers unload cotton into cotton handlers, which in turn dump it into module builders, which tightly pack the cotton into large brick-shaped modules for transport to the gin. Modules weigh about 20,000 pounds.

Late September and early October is prime cotton picking time, and that means long days for everyone. The gin at Tanner and Co. runs 24 hours a day, pausing only to clean out machines that get stopped up.

Module trucks also run in two 12-hours shifts, going as far as Bunkie, La., and Cole Creek to pick up cotton, though most of the gin’s customers are within 25 miles of Frogmore.

Computers help monitor and control the cotton pickers. Computers control the cotton dryers, the lint cleaners and the gin stands &045; in short, just about every aspect of the cotton gin can be controlled from two computer screens.

Gin manager Randy Ainsworth automated most of the gin processes when he took over the facility five years ago, improving both effiency and safety with computer-controlled machinery.

On an average day, the gin will process 750 bales of cotton, then ship them to warehouses where they will stay until a deal is made by cotton brokers.

And things will keep on changing.

Soon GPS systems will make steering obsolete. Starting next year at Tanner, sensors will allow onboard computers to drive the picker down the rows automatically, harvesting the cotton with virtually no input from the driver.

The same GPS systems will help workers make straighter, more uniform rows in which to plant cotton, eliminating &uot;wide middles.&uot; Making rows by sight typically results

&uot;All the way across that field, that may be another acre you have in there,&uot; Branton said.

But don’t worry &045; some things never change. Tanner and Co. doesn’t grow anything but cotton and there are no plans to change that.

&uot;(Owner) Buddy (Tanner) says corn won’t go through that cotton gin so he ain’t growing it,&uot; Branton said.