Jeans have come a long way from their humble roots as the tough but affordable work pants made famous by Levi Strauss. It is no longer uncommon to see a pair of jeans selling for $100, $200, or even $300, and the global jeans market is valued at more than $50 billion. To people around the world, jeans represent a symbol of American culture, and many foreigners are willing to save their hard-earned wages for these expensive American imports.

Those of us willing to drop a sizable chunk of our paychecks on the latest designer denim would probably be a little shocked to learn that a pair of jeans, no matter how fancy or expensive, contains about 2-3 pounds of cotton fiber and little else, save for a bit of metal and possibly a touch of spandex. The farmer's share for growing the cotton fiber used in a typical pair of jeans? Only $1-2, depending on current market conditions.

Even more surprising is the amount of work that goes into producing that cotton. The incredibly intensive process that begins with a seed and ends with a bale ready to sell is a way of life for cotton farmers, a demanding and time-consuming business that may or may not be profitable in a given year.

It all starts with land preparation—fertilizer application, weed control—in the dead of winter. When spring rolls around, the cotton farmer makes seed purchases, continues field preparations, and waits for the planting window to open. Planting time—which varies based on weather and location but usually begins in May—is when the "real" work begins. From planting time until September, managing irrigation and keeping the land free of weeds and pests is a full-time job, minus time-and-a-half pay for overtime or holidays.

In mid-September, irrigation is scaled back and the cotton bolls begin to open. It is time to get the crop ready for harvest by conditioning the plant to drop its leaves. Once harvest time rolls around in October, the cotton farmer a) prays for dry weather, b) is out in the field working every hour he can, and c) tries to collect the cotton as soon as possible in order to be done by Thanksgiving. A wet harvest season opens the door for yield and quality losses to vulnerable, open cotton, and bad weather can stretch harvest time to Christmas or beyond.

For a product that sells for less than a dollar a pound, cotton sure does require expensive equipment. A significant cotton farm of 1,500 to 2,500 acres requires either two to three cotton strippers—which go for around $ $200,000 a pop—or one to two cotton pickers that can cost up to $500,000 each. Add in the cost of the other specialized equipment needed to plant, plow, and harvest a crop and it is easy to see why farming isn't an occupation for the faint of heart.

Getting the crop to harvest, though, is only the first part of cotton's journey to becoming a pair of jeans. Like certain other commodities, such as sugar, cotton needs to be processed before it becomes usable. Ginning—the process of removing the lint from the seed—actually takes even longer than the harvest and sometimes isn't completed until late January or February.

Once the cotton has been ginned, it is still a long way from being ready to be sold. Now, it is packaged in bales that weigh around 500 pounds and measure 4.5 feet tall, 3 feet across, and 1.5 feet deep. Each bale receives a unique ID number that allows it to be tracked throughout the marketing process.

A small sample from each bale is sent to the closest USDA Cotton Classing Office, where it goes through a number of quality tests—measuring color, strength, trash, and uniformity and length of fibers—and receives an official grade that is put into a computer and reported to the producer. Farmers pay for both ginning and having their cotton graded. These expensive but necessary processes are the final steps in the production process.

At this point, the cotton is finally ready to be put on the market. Producers can sell the crop themselves or pledge their bales into a marketing pool and take an average of the pool's returns. On the other end of the transaction are the buyers, who mostly purchase cotton in groups, or lots, of bales. Buyers are typically cotton merchants and exporters who make the purchase behalf of a client—usually a textile mill looking for a specific quality of cotton—or for resale at a later date.

Despite all the time and work that has been put into the cotton process already, before it can be turned into those fashionable denim jeans, the cotton still needs to be cleaned (again), processed, and spun into yarn. The yarn is dyed and turned into fabric that will be cut and sewn to make a garment that sells at retail for many times the value of the raw material it is made from.

At the end of the day, the producer only receives what the market says his cotton is worth—a price per pound that may or may not represent a profit that production season.

In 1980, it was commonplace to purchase a pair of jeans for $10. Thirty years later, the price of cotton has barely budged, but basic jean prices have skyrocketed and designer denim is still highly coveted by high-end consumers. It's just too bad that the cotton farmer isn't seeing any of those profits.