Terroir (French pronunciation: from terre, land) is the set of all environmental factors that affect a crop's phenotype, including unique environment contexts, farming practices and a crop's specific growth habitat.
Eli Whitney, a native of Massachusetts, secured a patent on the cotton gin in 1793, though patent office records indicate that the first cotton gin may have been built by a machinist named Noah Homes two years before Whitneyâs patent was filed.
Whitneyâs hand-cranked machine could remove the seeds from 50 pounds of cotton in a single day. Whitney received a patent for his invention in 1794; he and Miller then formed a cotton gin manufacturing company. The two entrepreneurs planned to build cotton gins and install them on plantations throughout the South, taking as payment a portion of all the cotton produced by each plantation.