Virginia cotton farmers may have grown the materials for your son’s new blue jeans or your daughter’s trendy T-shirt.

In Virginia, 84,000 acres of cotton were harvested in 2015, yielding about 143,000 pounds per acre.

According to Mike Quinn of the Virginia Cotton Growers Cooperative, it takes about 2½ pounds of cotton to make one pair of jeans. That means Virginia growers produced enough cotton to make 57,200 pairs. That’s a lot of denim!

Cotton was grown by American Indians in the early 1500s, and Spaniards raised a cotton crop in Florida in 1556. By the early 1600s cotton had been introduced in North America, and it was planted by Virginia colonists who settled along the James River.

Early colonists could grow cotton but had limited ability to process it into textiles. Once Samuel Slater built the first U.S. cotton mill in 1790, the industry began to grow. In 1793 Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin, revolutionizing the way cotton fiber was separated from seeds.

Today, Virginia cotton growers harvest the bolls using mechanical harvesters. Most Virginia cotton is grown in the southern and southeastern parts of the state.