Harris Barnes, Jr. was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi in December 1918. He got an early start in agriculture helping his dad, Harris Barnes, a long-time Extension Agent of Coahoma County, on a small 400-acre farm just after the Great Depression, and during his high school summers of 1933-37.

Barnes majored in Agricultural Administration at Mississippi State College, and graduated with Honors in 1941, when WWII was beginning to "heat up." All military services were then looking for officer material among the nation's college graduates, and Barnes opted for the Marine Corps OCS program.

When the war ended in 1945, he resigned a Regular Commission in the Marine Corps, but remained in the Marine Corps Reserve. He then returned to Mississippi as a farm manager for Bill Connell's Baugh Plantation, where he embraced the first mechanical cotton picker, the first herbicides for cotton, improved farm chemicals, and planted skip-row cotton.

In 1957 Barnes moved to King and Anderson, Inc., where he served as the general farm manager for a 12,000-acre farm. During this period, he was named President of the American Soybean Association, the Mississippi State University Alumni Association, and the Clarksdale Rotary Club.

In 1967, Progressive Farmer magazine named Barnes its Man of the Year in Service to Southern Agriculture.

In 1970, Barnes went full-time into agricultural journalism and photography, and over the years has written and illustrated articles for Farm Quarterly, Farm Press publications, Progressive Farmer, Farm Journal, Cotton Grower, Cotton Farming, and many other publications. Barnes has also conducted extensive public relations programs, including writing and photography, for numerous farm chemical and machinery firms over several decades. Barnes helped organize, and was the first editor, of Southeast Farm Press. 

He continued his work in the Marine Corps Reserve and on his birthday in 1978, retired as a Colonel, with 20 years of satisfactory federal service, with a total of 37 years in the Corps.

 

In his first book, Cotton: A 50-Year Pictorial History, published in 2002, has been a best seller, and is now in its third printing. This book has won two major honors: The 2004 Award of Merit form the Mississippi Historical Society and the 2006 Mississippi Author Award from the Mississippi Library Association.

 

His 15 years of working with growers and crops in that region enabled him, in 2004, to author his second book, The Beauty of Southern Agriculture, which features tobacco, peanuts, corn and other crops not grown in a "big way" in the Mid South.

 

His third and final book, the Good Ol' Days on the Cotton Farm, was written in 2006.