Delta and Pine Land Company
Summary
In 1886, Delta & Pine Land Company was chartered in Mississippi as a land speculation company, but was inactive until 1919, when a British textile company acquired the name. In the 1920-30s, the company operated the largest cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, with headquarters in Scott, Mississippi–15 miles north of Greenville, 25 miles southwest of Cleveland. In the latter half of the 20th century, the company divested its farm lands, concentrated on research and development of cotton and soybean seeds, and became world-renown for its development of Deltapine cotton varieties.
Cotton Farming in the Early 20th Century
As the twentieth century began, development of the Mississippi Delta was accelerated by an unexpected and favorable turn in the cotton market. Just after the despair and frustration of cotton farmers had reached new depths in 1896, the market rose. In 1898 cotton sold for 5.73 cents per pound; in 1900 for 9.15 cents; in 1909, for 13.52 cents—the highest price since Reconstruction. Delta planters responded with more cutting, draining, clearing, and planting. Local drainage districts supplemented the work of the big levee commissions by ditching and draining smaller streams and bayous. In the Delta's interior, Sunflower County's cleared acreage shot up from 14,170 in 1880 to 156,906 by 1910.
Wealthy owners have been increasing their holdings, and corporations have been purchasing groups of plantations for the purpose of producing cotton on extensive scale. Highly rationalized businesses reaped rewards of large profits with now-higher cotton prices.
The prospects of gain attracted capital from outside Mississippi and even from outside the country. An English syndicate bought Hill House plantation in Washington County for $340,000. The Delta Farms Company included Dutch partners. From headquarters in Memphis the company managed several large plantations in Bolivar County, with over six thousand acres planted in 1914. Stuyvesant Fish, president of the Illinois Central Railroad, headed a group of northern capitalists who bought ten thousand acres in Coahoma County. J. W. Mann of LeFlore County owned one plantation, which was managed by his son-in-law, and managed a separate plantation for a friend from Illinois who bought it "on speculation."
One local player who recognized these possibilities and profited to the maximum was Charles Scott, the 1890s political boss of Bolivar County. Scott was a planter and lawyer, a builder and railroad promoter, a real estate speculator, the president of a bank and of a major levee lobbying association, and an owner of cotton seed mills. In 1911, with cotton prices still high, he bought up options on several plantations, principally in his home county of Bolivar, and hired L.K. Salsbury, a Michigan-born real estate promoter who lived in Memphis, to help him sell the land.
Salsbury went to England and convinced members of the Fine Cotton Spinners and Doublers' Association of Manchester that they could profit handsomely from an investment in high-quality cotton land that could, in turn, supply their looms with high-quality cotton. Their source of long fiber cotton from Egypt had experienced low crop yields, and pirates took many of the vessels carrying cotton from North Africa to England many of the vessels carrying cotton from North Africa to England.
The Directors of the Fine Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ Association, Ltd. (FCSDA) visited Bolivar County and negotiated with L.K. Salsbury for the acquisition of an estimated 36,000 acres from over a dozen property owners, as well as from Salsbury, for approximately $3 million.
Because an 1890 federal law prohibited farming operations from owning more than 12,500 acres of land, the British capitalists initially formed three companies. FCSDA organized operations under the Mississippi Delta Planting Company, which leased land from the other two companies, the Triumph Planting Company and the Lake Vista Planting Company. Salsbury became president of Mississippi Delta Planting Company. The three companies would consolidate under the charter of D&PL in 1919 with the acquisition of Delta & Pine Land Company’s (D&PL) nearly worthless stock of a company formed in 1886 as a land speculation company. Since the D&PL charter dated to before the 1890 law, the company was exempt from the land ownership limitation. (Interestingly, not a single pine tree existed on the land.)
FCSDA invested $1.5 million in their new cotton plantation with mixed results. D&PL cleared virgin land, drained the soil along the bayous, and constructed cabins for tenant farmers. The first year’s yield was only 2,800 bales of cotton, 500 pounds per bale, using hand and mule labor. The land was unable to produce the long staple cotton to the standard that FCSDA required and the company never used cotton fiber from the U.S. plantation in its mills. Short staple cotton sold on the open market at a higher profit, however, and D&PL proved to be a valuable investment for FCSDA whose sources in Egypt rebounded before World War I.
D&PL faced many difficulties in the early years, including drought, heavy rains, and an infestation of boll weevils which fed on cotton. The Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station [now Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (MAFES)] had initially researched the boll weevil problem before it reached Bolivar County in 1911. Research involved cultivation techniques and the crossbreeding of new varieties of cotton to avoid the populous season of the pests. At the MAFES Delta Branch Station (Stoneville), Early C. Ewing pioneered hybrid cotton varieties to produce fast-fruiting and early maturing varieties of cotton for that purpose. D&PL hired Ewing in 1915 for its Cotton Research and Improvement Program where Ewing continued his work on pest control and crossbred cotton varieties for fiber length, strength, uniformity, and high crop yield. D&PL adopted the name Deltapine for these new cotton varieties.
In the company’s first decades D&PL also contended with heavy rains and high water levels on the Mississippi River. The levee broke in 1912 and 1913, but sharecroppers were soon able to plant at higher elevations. A bridge built over Lake Bolivar in 1914 allowed cultivation of land on the far side, after it had been cleared of virgin timber and thousands of rattlesnakes.
While the levees held during the floods of 1916 and 1922, during the flood of 1927 the Mississippi River overflowed as much as 100 miles inland. The $500,000 damage sustained by D&PL involved the loss of 100 homes, 200 mules by drowning, and, of course, loss of arable land. Specifically, the river deposited a two- to six-foot layer of sand on 5,000 acres of land, making some the company’s best land unfit for crops. With Oscar Johnston as president, D&PL responded by planting grasses and converting the land to cattle grazing. The river receded too late in 1927 to plant on most of the land, and D&PL sharecroppers produced only 40 bales that year.
D&PL Thrives through the Great Depression and World War II
Under Johnston’s leadership D&PL became a thriving cotton plantation, even through the Great Depression. Prior to the Government Cotton Control Program, designed to limit market surplus in the early years of the Depression, D&PL planted 14,000 to 18,000 acres. Regarded as a highly efficient organization, the cotton plantation was divided into 11 units, each supervised by a unit manager. Sharecroppers included 1,400 workers and their families. In 1936 D&PL plantations yielded approximately 15,000 bales of cotton on 11,700 acres. (That’s more than a bale to the acre! In the 1930s!!!) Sharecroppers earned about $1,000 from their cotton crop and supplemented that income on the one-half acre provided to each family for gardening and personal use.
D&PL was the largest, most successful plantation in the country and attracted visitors from countries around the world, including Turkey, Australia, Egypt, France, China, and South Africa. D&PL’s cotton plantation averaged 9,130 acres between 1933 and 1943 and produced an average yield of 653.3 pounds of cotton fiber per acre and 980 pounds of seed. A new variety of cotton introduced in 1942, Deltapine 14, yielded 737 pounds per acre. Acreage for corn averaged 2,183 acres between 1933 and 1943, while 7,736 acres provided food, animal feed, and grazing lands.
D&PL gradually converted to mechanized methods of planting and cultivation during World War II. In 1945 6,300 acres of cotton were cultivated by 612 sharecropper families, involving 1,547 workers, averaging ten acres per family plus seasonal workers. Use of Deltapine cotton varieties spread across the southern cotton states from Texas to North Carolina. Experimental stations in South America allowed D&PL to test its seeds during the winter in the northern hemisphere, speeding the process of developing and testing new varieties from parent lines since they could go through two breeding/testing cycles per year instead of just one.
As clothing manufacturers changed to synthetic fibers, cotton began to lose some of its share of the fiber market, creating a cotton surplus in the late 1950s. The change was gradual. From an 88.3 percent share of the fiber market in 1920, cotton declined to an 80.6 percent share in 1940 and to 65 percent in 1956. Private and government efforts aimed to strengthen cotton’s share of the fiber market by strengthening the quality of cotton fiber. With Charles R. Sayer as president, D&PL increased its research budget by 50 percent between 1951 and 1957. A new, smooth leaf variety developed by D&PL at this time improved the quality of cotton and reduced waste. At 1957 prices, a $150 bale of cotton would be valued $7 to $10 more per bale. Negative effects of the cotton surplus on D&PL were offset by federal farm supports (which gave D&PL nearly $1.2 million in 1957) and expansion of the cattle herd.
Although D&PL originally existed as a cotton producer, the company achieved its greatest success as a breeder of cotton planting seeds. D&PL developed into the largest such company in the United States, aided by the extensive plant breeding programs the company launched over the years. The company concentrated on producing varieties of cotton planting seed for cotton varieties grown in Arizona and east of Texas. Through its plant breeding programs, D&PL developed gene pools capable of producing cotton varieties with superior traits that benefited both farmers and textile manufacturers. D&PL's cottonseeds could improve crop yields, a benefit to farmers, and the company's seeds could produce cotton with improved fiber characteristics, a benefit to textile manufacturers.
D&PL achieved its greatest success late in the 20th century when the company's financial might exponentially increased. Technological advancements, product diversification, and growth-minded management contributed greatly to the company's transformation. (You may have forgotten by now, but at this point D&PL still belongs to that British company, FCSDA). In 1964, FCSDA was acquired by Courtaulds, another British textile company. And in 1978, Courtaulds sold D&PL, in a leveraged buyout, to U.S. investors (Southwide, Inc. of Memphis, led by Roger Malkin). During the years that followed, most of the D&PL farm acreage was sold and the company concentrated on research and development of improved varieties of cotton and soybean seeds.
A new era of fast-paced growth began in 1978, when D&PL began marketing soybean planting seeds in the United States but the decade's most important achievement occurred a short while later – it went international.
D&PL became the world’s largest cotton breeder, doing business in the U.S and in 18 other countries. In its cotton breeding research, D&PL benefitted both cotton farmers and textile manufacturers.
Other research successes included development of early maturing varieties, transgenic row-crop seeds, and the first Roundup Ready cotton seeds. By the mid-1980s, D&PL was marketing ten varieties of cotton seeds and six varieties of soybean seeds.
International and Technological Growth in the 1990s
In the 1990s, research between D&PL and the U.S. Department of Agriculture resulted in three U.S. patents on terminator seed technology. The first patent (Number 5723765) was issued on March 3, 1998. Advocates claimed that the technology restricted the introduction of genetically modified plants into nature by causing second generation seeds to be sterile. The opposing point of view was that farmers who used terminator seeds could no longer rely on saved seeds to produce subsequent crops.
But, then the big boys took notice. After a period of joint work with Monsanto, the announcement was made in 1998 that the two companies would merge, a deal that was valued initially at $1.8 billion. For 19 months, the proposed merger awaited approval by the U.S. Department of Justice. The months of waiting were in vain, as the merger collapsed, causing a furor that would drag on for months.
Finally in June 2007, after more joint projects, many spats, legal wrangling and more, Monsanto announced that it has completed its proposed acquisition of Delta and Pine Land Company for approximately $1.5 billion. Delta and Pine Land business operated independently of Monsanto's other commercial operations until Monsanto divested the Stoneville and NexGen businesses. Then Monsanto combined the business operations of Delta and Pine Land with its existing business.
Key Dates:
1886: Delta & Pine Land’s earliest incarnation is formed as a land speculation company.
1915: D&PL begins selling cotton seed under the brand name of Deltapine.
1919: Assets of D&PL acquired for corporate charter by the Fine Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ Association, Ltd. (FCSDA).
1927: Flood of Mississippi River damages cotton crops.
1936: Cotton production profitable for D&PL despite Great Depression.
1957: Drop in cotton consumption prompts concern.
1961: Company’s Western Division office opens in California.
1978: Courtaulds sells D&PL to Southwide, Inc.
1988: An International Division is formed at D&PL.
1993: D&PL is spun off as a public company.
1996: D&PL introduces genetically engineered cotton.
2007: D&PL acquired by Monsanto
In 1886, Delta & Pine Land Company was chartered in Mississippi as a land speculation company, but was inactive until 1919, when a British textile company acquired the name. In the 1920-30s, the company operated the largest cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, with headquarters in Scott, Mississippi–15 miles north of Greenville, 25 miles southwest of Cleveland. In the latter half of the 20th century, the company divested its farm lands, concentrated on research and development of cotton and soybean seeds, and became world-renown for its development of Deltapine cotton varieties.
Cotton Farming in the Early 20th Century
As the twentieth century began, development of the Mississippi Delta was accelerated by an unexpected and favorable turn in the cotton market. Just after the despair and frustration of cotton farmers had reached new depths in 1896, the market rose. In 1898 cotton sold for 5.73 cents per pound; in 1900 for 9.15 cents; in 1909, for 13.52 cents—the highest price since Reconstruction. Delta planters responded with more cutting, draining, clearing, and planting. Local drainage districts supplemented the work of the big levee commissions by ditching and draining smaller streams and bayous. In the Delta's interior, Sunflower County's cleared acreage shot up from 14,170 in 1880 to 156,906 by 1910.
Wealthy owners have been increasing their holdings, and corporations have been purchasing groups of plantations for the purpose of producing cotton on extensive scale. Highly rationalized businesses reaped rewards of large profits with now-higher cotton prices.
The prospects of gain attracted capital from outside Mississippi and even from outside the country. An English syndicate bought Hill House plantation in Washington County for $340,000. The Delta Farms Company included Dutch partners. From headquarters in Memphis the company managed several large plantations in Bolivar County, with over six thousand acres planted in 1914. Stuyvesant Fish, president of the Illinois Central Railroad, headed a group of northern capitalists who bought ten thousand acres in Coahoma County. J. W. Mann of LeFlore County owned one plantation, which was managed by his son-in-law, and managed a separate plantation for a friend from Illinois who bought it "on speculation."
One local player who recognized these possibilities and profited to the maximum was Charles Scott, the 1890s political boss of Bolivar County. Scott was a planter and lawyer, a builder and railroad promoter, a real estate speculator, the president of a bank and of a major levee lobbying association, and an owner of cotton seed mills. In 1911, with cotton prices still high, he bought up options on several plantations, principally in his home county of Bolivar, and hired L.K. Salsbury, a Michigan-born real estate promoter who lived in Memphis, to help him sell the land.
Salsbury went to England and convinced members of the Fine Cotton Spinners and Doublers' Association of Manchester that they could profit handsomely from an investment in high-quality cotton land that could, in turn, supply their looms with high-quality cotton. Their source of long fiber cotton from Egypt had experienced low crop yields, and pirates took many of the vessels carrying cotton from North Africa to England many of the vessels carrying cotton from North Africa to England.
The Directors of the Fine Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ Association, Ltd. (FCSDA) visited Bolivar County and negotiated with L.K. Salsbury for the acquisition of an estimated 36,000 acres from over a dozen property owners, as well as from Salsbury, for approximately $3 million.
Because an 1890 federal law prohibited farming operations from owning more than 12,500 acres of land, the British capitalists initially formed three companies. FCSDA organized operations under the Mississippi Delta Planting Company, which leased land from the other two companies, the Triumph Planting Company and the Lake Vista Planting Company. Salsbury became president of Mississippi Delta Planting Company. The three companies would consolidate under the charter of D&PL in 1919 with the acquisition of Delta & Pine Land Company’s (D&PL) nearly worthless stock of a company formed in 1886 as a land speculation company. Since the D&PL charter dated to before the 1890 law, the company was exempt from the land ownership limitation. (Interestingly, not a single pine tree existed on the land.)
FCSDA invested $1.5 million in their new cotton plantation with mixed results. D&PL cleared virgin land, drained the soil along the bayous, and constructed cabins for tenant farmers. The first year’s yield was only 2,800 bales of cotton, 500 pounds per bale, using hand and mule labor. The land was unable to produce the long staple cotton to the standard that FCSDA required and the company never used cotton fiber from the U.S. plantation in its mills. Short staple cotton sold on the open market at a higher profit, however, and D&PL proved to be a valuable investment for FCSDA whose sources in Egypt rebounded before World War I.
D&PL faced many difficulties in the early years, including drought, heavy rains, and an infestation of boll weevils which fed on cotton. The Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station [now Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (MAFES)] had initially researched the boll weevil problem before it reached Bolivar County in 1911. Research involved cultivation techniques and the crossbreeding of new varieties of cotton to avoid the populous season of the pests. At the MAFES Delta Branch Station (Stoneville), Early C. Ewing pioneered hybrid cotton varieties to produce fast-fruiting and early maturing varieties of cotton for that purpose. D&PL hired Ewing in 1915 for its Cotton Research and Improvement Program where Ewing continued his work on pest control and crossbred cotton varieties for fiber length, strength, uniformity, and high crop yield. D&PL adopted the name Deltapine for these new cotton varieties.
In the company’s first decades D&PL also contended with heavy rains and high water levels on the Mississippi River. The levee broke in 1912 and 1913, but sharecroppers were soon able to plant at higher elevations. A bridge built over Lake Bolivar in 1914 allowed cultivation of land on the far side, after it had been cleared of virgin timber and thousands of rattlesnakes.
While the levees held during the floods of 1916 and 1922, during the flood of 1927 the Mississippi River overflowed as much as 100 miles inland. The $500,000 damage sustained by D&PL involved the loss of 100 homes, 200 mules by drowning, and, of course, loss of arable land. Specifically, the river deposited a two- to six-foot layer of sand on 5,000 acres of land, making some the company’s best land unfit for crops. With Oscar Johnston as president, D&PL responded by planting grasses and converting the land to cattle grazing. The river receded too late in 1927 to plant on most of the land, and D&PL sharecroppers produced only 40 bales that year.
D&PL Thrives through the Great Depression and World War II
Under Johnston’s leadership D&PL became a thriving cotton plantation, even through the Great Depression. Prior to the Government Cotton Control Program, designed to limit market surplus in the early years of the Depression, D&PL planted 14,000 to 18,000 acres. Regarded as a highly efficient organization, the cotton plantation was divided into 11 units, each supervised by a unit manager. Sharecroppers included 1,400 workers and their families. In 1936 D&PL plantations yielded approximately 15,000 bales of cotton on 11,700 acres. (That’s more than a bale to the acre! In the 1930s!!!) Sharecroppers earned about $1,000 from their cotton crop and supplemented that income on the one-half acre provided to each family for gardening and personal use.
D&PL was the largest, most successful plantation in the country and attracted visitors from countries around the world, including Turkey, Australia, Egypt, France, China, and South Africa. D&PL’s cotton plantation averaged 9,130 acres between 1933 and 1943 and produced an average yield of 653.3 pounds of cotton fiber per acre and 980 pounds of seed. A new variety of cotton introduced in 1942, Deltapine 14, yielded 737 pounds per acre. Acreage for corn averaged 2,183 acres between 1933 and 1943, while 7,736 acres provided food, animal feed, and grazing lands.
D&PL gradually converted to mechanized methods of planting and cultivation during World War II. In 1945 6,300 acres of cotton were cultivated by 612 sharecropper families, involving 1,547 workers, averaging ten acres per family plus seasonal workers. Use of Deltapine cotton varieties spread across the southern cotton states from Texas to North Carolina. Experimental stations in South America allowed D&PL to test its seeds during the winter in the northern hemisphere, speeding the process of developing and testing new varieties from parent lines since they could go through two breeding/testing cycles per year instead of just one.
As clothing manufacturers changed to synthetic fibers, cotton began to lose some of its share of the fiber market, creating a cotton surplus in the late 1950s. The change was gradual. From an 88.3 percent share of the fiber market in 1920, cotton declined to an 80.6 percent share in 1940 and to 65 percent in 1956. Private and government efforts aimed to strengthen cotton’s share of the fiber market by strengthening the quality of cotton fiber. With Charles R. Sayer as president, D&PL increased its research budget by 50 percent between 1951 and 1957. A new, smooth leaf variety developed by D&PL at this time improved the quality of cotton and reduced waste. At 1957 prices, a $150 bale of cotton would be valued $7 to $10 more per bale. Negative effects of the cotton surplus on D&PL were offset by federal farm supports (which gave D&PL nearly $1.2 million in 1957) and expansion of the cattle herd.
Although D&PL originally existed as a cotton producer, the company achieved its greatest success as a breeder of cotton planting seeds. D&PL developed into the largest such company in the United States, aided by the extensive plant breeding programs the company launched over the years. The company concentrated on producing varieties of cotton planting seed for cotton varieties grown in Arizona and east of Texas. Through its plant breeding programs, D&PL developed gene pools capable of producing cotton varieties with superior traits that benefited both farmers and textile manufacturers. D&PL's cottonseeds could improve crop yields, a benefit to farmers, and the company's seeds could produce cotton with improved fiber characteristics, a benefit to textile manufacturers.
D&PL achieved its greatest success late in the 20th century when the company's financial might exponentially increased. Technological advancements, product diversification, and growth-minded management contributed greatly to the company's transformation. (You may have forgotten by now, but at this point D&PL still belongs to that British company, FCSDA). In 1964, FCSDA was acquired by Courtaulds, another British textile company. And in 1978, Courtaulds sold D&PL, in a leveraged buyout, to U.S. investors (Southwide, Inc. of Memphis, led by Roger Malkin). During the years that followed, most of the D&PL farm acreage was sold and the company concentrated on research and development of improved varieties of cotton and soybean seeds.
A new era of fast-paced growth began in 1978, when D&PL began marketing soybean planting seeds in the United States but the decade's most important achievement occurred a short while later – it went international.
D&PL became the world’s largest cotton breeder, doing business in the U.S and in 18 other countries. In its cotton breeding research, D&PL benefitted both cotton farmers and textile manufacturers.
Other research successes included development of early maturing varieties, transgenic row-crop seeds, and the first Roundup Ready cotton seeds. By the mid-1980s, D&PL was marketing ten varieties of cotton seeds and six varieties of soybean seeds.
International and Technological Growth in the 1990s
In the 1990s, research between D&PL and the U.S. Department of Agriculture resulted in three U.S. patents on terminator seed technology. The first patent (Number 5723765) was issued on March 3, 1998. Advocates claimed that the technology restricted the introduction of genetically modified plants into nature by causing second generation seeds to be sterile. The opposing point of view was that farmers who used terminator seeds could no longer rely on saved seeds to produce subsequent crops.
But, then the big boys took notice. After a period of joint work with Monsanto, the announcement was made in 1998 that the two companies would merge, a deal that was valued initially at $1.8 billion. For 19 months, the proposed merger awaited approval by the U.S. Department of Justice. The months of waiting were in vain, as the merger collapsed, causing a furor that would drag on for months.
Finally in June 2007, after more joint projects, many spats, legal wrangling and more, Monsanto announced that it has completed its proposed acquisition of Delta and Pine Land Company for approximately $1.5 billion. Delta and Pine Land business operated independently of Monsanto's other commercial operations until Monsanto divested the Stoneville and NexGen businesses. Then Monsanto combined the business operations of Delta and Pine Land with its existing business.
Key Dates:
1886: Delta & Pine Land’s earliest incarnation is formed as a land speculation company.
1915: D&PL begins selling cotton seed under the brand name of Deltapine.
1919: Assets of D&PL acquired for corporate charter by the Fine Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ Association, Ltd. (FCSDA).
1927: Flood of Mississippi River damages cotton crops.
1936: Cotton production profitable for D&PL despite Great Depression.
1957: Drop in cotton consumption prompts concern.
1961: Company’s Western Division office opens in California.
1978: Courtaulds sells D&PL to Southwide, Inc.
1988: An International Division is formed at D&PL.
1993: D&PL is spun off as a public company.
1996: D&PL introduces genetically engineered cotton.
2007: D&PL acquired by Monsanto
Some photos of the Scott operations from 1939 can be seen under "Other Places/Scott."
