Cotton



Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.

The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile. Before Souma Kazuya's arrival, cotton was the main crop grown by the Elfrieden Kingdom.

Background

Cotton was grown to meet the demand for textiles after the appearance of the Demon Lord's Domain. Previously, the northern countries were the leading manufacturers of cotton, but due to the monster attacks, cotton production in those areas greatly decreased. As a result, the price for cotton goods sharply rose with the decreased supply. The Elfrieden Kingdom started to produce more cotton and less food crops. To handle the lack of food production, the Kingdom imported food from other nations.

However, when the other countries began growing their own cotton to take advantage of the potential profit, this caused a huge surplus of cotton to flood the market. As a result the price of cotton began to drop severely. With less money available to import food, this also caused domestic food prices to become too high for the common citizen to afford. Famine and food shortages became one of the main problems for the new king Souma to solve.

Souma's solution was to limit the amount of cotton being produced and encourage the farmers to switch back to growing food crops again. Furthermore, all foods, imported or domestic, would be bought by the Kingdom and sold to its citizens at a discounted rate. The shortfall would be made up by exports and finding something other than cotton.

Trivia

The phrase, Cotton is King, was coined during the years before the American Civil War, where southern plantation owners felt that no one could challenge their monopoly on cotton. However, this ideal became their undoing during the Civil War when countries such as India and Egypt began growing their own cotton and the Northern Blockade prevented the South from exporting its cotton. Southern farmers were unwilling to stop growing cotton and start growing food, which led to highly inflated food prices and massive food shortages in the South.