[imgbelt img=03COTTON2-articleInline.jpg]Yes, we will tell you how rural voted in Tuesday’s election, starting with the congressional races. We are busy at this moment compiling, mapping, adding and, for Democrats, subtracting.For now, however, the rest of the news:• Cotton prices are going up and so, yes, jeans will get more expensive. Some clothing makers are turning 100% cotton goods into acrylic blends. (Yuk!)The price of cotton has risen almost 80 percent since July, according to the New York Times. World consumption is simply outstripping demand. Producers had worked down inventories during the recession and then bad weather wrecked cotton crops in Pakistan, China and India. • We’ve read this story before, and here it is again: There are simply not enough large animal veterinarians to go around. The lack of large animal vets is a food safety problem as well as a production problem. Now a survey finds that only 2 percent of vet school students in the class of 2010 plan to work with animals other than pets. Two percent!!So, the number of large animal vets continues to drop while the dog and cat vets multiply.And, half of the farm-animal vets are older than 50; only 4.4 percent are younder than 30. • The proposition calling for tougher regulation of puppy mills passed in Missouri. The proposition was pushed by the Humane Society.The rural/urban split on the bill was “yawning,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In St. Louis and Kansas City, the proposition was passing three-to-one. In some rural counties, the vote against the proposition was running up to 85 percent.