The cotton plant can be found as a perennial in treelike plants in tropical climates but is normally cultivated as a shrubby annual in temperate climates. For the successful cultivation of cotton there needs to be a long frost-free period, plenty of sunshine and at least 24 to 48 inches of rainfall (600 to 1200mm). The best places for cotton to grow are either in the northern or the southern hemisphere. Were the soils are dense and the levels of the nutrients in the soil are need not be that exceptional. The planting of cotton varies from the beginning of February to the beginning of June.

Most of the cotton in United States, Europe, and Australia is harvested mechanically in two ways. The first way is by a cotton picker which is a machine that extracts the cotton from the boll without damaging the plant itself; the second is by a cotton stripper which strips the entire boll from the plant.  Cotton strippers are used in regions where it is too windy to grow picker varieties of cotton, and usually after the use of a chemical defoliant or the natural defoliation that occurs after a freeze.

The production of the cotton crop in any given year usually starts after the preceding autumn when the weather is not cold so that the bolls don?t freeze and the cotton doesn?t grow. In the United States there is the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world also known as the South Plains were the weather is optimal for the cultivation of cotton. Since cotton is somewhat salt and drought tolerant, this makes it an attractive crop for arid and semiarid regions. As water resources get tighter around the world, economies that rely on it face difficulties and conflict, as well as potential environmental problems.