Moscow ? After years of planning, a site has been selected for the first cotton gin in southwest Kansas, an area which many people believed had too high an elevation and too short a growing season for cotton.

The board of directors of Northwest Cotton Growers Cooperative Inc. announced Thursday that Moscow will be the home of the $3.5 million cotton gin. The facility will be ready for this fall’s harvest, according to Bob Davis, NCG Co-op board member.

Cotton was virtually unheard of as a cash crop in southwest Kansas five years ago, when Davis, Jerry Stuckey, and brothers Tom and David Lahey started researching it as an alternative crop. In December 2000, those farmers harvested 80 acres of high grade cotton and reaped a little more than two bales per acre.

As word of their success spread, more farmers tried cotton, with about 5,000 acres planted last season and nearly 4,000 acres harvested.