Agriculture IV: King Cotton
This was the kind of agriculture we loved: well paid. Cotton became early on money instead
of labour intensive, people we did not have, money we could borrow.
Zeev Savranski, cotton was still packed by trampling - 1960.
Archive No.31796, photographed by Arie B.
We bought a number of harvesters, made a few directors of chemical companies very happy, by spraying baby
bollweevils with the nastiest of poisons imaginable before they knew what hit them and
inundated those cotton fields. All not very ecologically sound, but
very good for our bank account.
1983 - (you'll notice the picture's in colour, those were the years of the new, "correct"
Likud inspired economy, when everybody lived beyond their means and inflation would catch us
all out)
Juri's driving, Avramchik, our book keeper, is assessing our gain
It was too good to last. The bottom fell out of the cotton price barrel and water prices went up. We made a last attempt with naturally coloured cotton. The scientists were very optimistic: they developed brownish and greenish cotton varieties, and lastly something looking sort of yellow. The prices were too high, the colour range too small, another drought set in, and that was about that.