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| 15-20 years ago CIH picker market share was something like 30% ... as far as I remember. CIH was building 250-300 4/6 row basket pickers/year back then alongside 5500 combines/year.
In the Spring of '98 at the Mid-South Gin Show in Memphis, CIH ran a focus group of 10 hand picked farmers and 10 hand picked gin operators in an upstairs meeting room at the downtown convention center. The gin operators tore the CIH reps up and down that a baler would put them out of business. That the investment in new handling equipment and higher labor costs to unwrap bales (twine or plastic wrap) would push American cotton production out of the USA and off to China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIXRurYJflA
The final decision by the CIH decider was that a baler was no-go and a 1/2 module concept might be pursued at some point in the distant future. One of the 1998 focus group attendees lobbied to eventually get the 1/2 module design/build business for himself in TN. After a 4 year hiatus the ME project was eventually funded by CIH for 2002 and dropped in his lap to pursue whatever he wanted to do.
Edited by biscuit 9/24/2020 01:16
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Is this the current state of affairs?
