There are two ways to harvest cotton — by machine or by hand.

In large production areas, such as those in the United States, cotton can only be harvested by mechanical means. It is either picked or stripped depending on the type of cotton and type of harvesting machine used, The cotton is then put into a module builder to be compressed into either rectangular or cylindrical modules.
In India and other countries, cotton is mostly handpicked and farmers personally bring their harvests to market.