Young cotton farmers from across the Mid-South and Southeast, most of them in their 20s and 30s, recently made the trip to Cary, N.C., to see firsthand how their checkoff dollars are spent to fund research and promotion for cotton.

The group of about 40 farmers from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia were part of the Cotton Board’s Southeast/Mid-South Young Guns Producer Tour of Cotton Incoporated’s world headquarters June 20.

“Our mission is simple but very complex at the same time. It is to increase the demand and profitability of cotton. We do that through research and promotion,” said Berrye Worsham, Cotton Incorporated’s president and CEO.

Cotton farmers pay an assessment of $1 per bale plus one-half of one percent of the value of the bale of cotton to fund the work Cotton Incorporated. About half the funds for Cotton Incorporated comes from cotton producers with the other half coming from an assessment on cotton products imported to the U.S. In 2016, Cotton Incorporated’s budget is $76 million, down from $80 million in 2015.

A highlight of the tour was a visit to Cotton Incorporated’s fiber quality laboratory in Cary. “This is a state of the art laboratory unlike any in the world where you can go from yard to fabric to finished consumer product and evaluate at every step along the way. There is no other lab like it. You have built something very, very special in this lab,” Mike Watson, vice president of fiber competition for Cotton Incorporated told the young farmers.

The "Young Guns" tour was managed by the Cotton Board which administers the cotton research and promotion program that is conducted by Cotton Incorporated.