Delta & Pine Land Company was initially chartered in Mississippi in 1886 as a land speculation company, but was inactive until 1919, when a British textile company acquired the name. In the 1920s and 1930s, the company operated one of the largest cotton plantations in the Mississippi Delta, with headquarters in Scott, Mississippi.[2] In the latter half of the 20th century, the company divested its farm lands, concentrated on research and development of cotton and soybean seeds, and became world-renowned for its development of Deltapine cotton varieties.[3]
History
The original Delta and Pine Land (D&PL) Company was chartered in 1886 to sell farm and timber land in the state of Mississippi, under laws that allowed almost unlimited land holdings by a single company.[4][5] State laws were later changed to restrict land acquisition and ownership, but these laws did not apply retroactively to companies that were grandfathered in