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The King is dead: once the mainstays of Mississippi farming, King Cotton no longer makes money.

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Even though he is officially retired from fanning, Billy Percy of Greenville still owns several thousand acres of land his brother-in-law farms every year.

Greenville, the Delta's largest city, owes its existence to the Mississippi River and the fertile soil surrounding it. For decades, better than any other place in the world, that soil grew one crop that came to define the region--cotton.

King Cotton, people called it, and it was a fitting title. The crop's production--from planting, to harvesting to ginning and warehousing--drove the Delta's economy, along the way becoming as much a part of the region as the River and the blues.

Those days appear to be over.

For the third consecutive year, none of Percy's land will grow cotton, and he's not alone.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Prospective Plantings Report, released March 31, shows cotton acreage in Mississippi...

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