during the years of mechanizing cotton production to reduce labor and cost, solutions to many problems were of a temporary nature and many of them abused the land and environment where the authors produced the crop. the current trend by the chemical companies to package concentrated technical material in returnable containers at user level is setting up a possible solution to the problem of keeping chemicals in a closed-loop handling system. a still unsolved area for the engineers is the development of accurate metering devices that are controlled by ground travel. future strategies in pest control will consist of indirect approaches rather than a direct or frontal attack $em dash$ strategies which would prevent problems from occurring. the engineer's role in the future is one of working in cooperation with other disciplines to plan and execute strategies to intensify production inputs, but over shorter periods of the total growing season than is now the practice. words such as precision, timeliness, predictability will become major criteria for success in obtaining increased yield with less input