The French commercial concerns that had lobbied for mandate control of Syria considered the ecology of large portions of the region eminently suitable for the cultivation of cotton, making it a high priority on French mandate officials' agenda as they contemplated how best to pursue the territory's mise en valeur. However, by the mid-thirties, optimistic prognostications for the project's success had been superseded by pessimism about the crop's future in Syria. This paper will explore the trajectory of this proposed project, contextualizing its development with respect to the dynamics of international circulations of capital, the ever-present possibility of foreign competition, local ecological constraints, and the fate of (largely unrealized) technological proposals. By exploring the realities of practice alongside the discursive representations used to promote the project and justify its shortcomings, the paper will elucidate the dissonances that characterized agricultural policy under mandate rule and the space they produced in this context. Given the type of cotton desired by French mills, achieving any substantial, assured yields would involve undertaking significant irrigation projects. It would also necessitate exerting considerable pressure on the cultivation choices of local farmers. French officials attempted to entice local farmers into the risky business of growing cotton with very little in the way of infrastructural support, preferring to invest in structures that would facilitate and expedite processing for French mills over projects such as irrigation networks for aspiring cotton farmers. While some farmers would experiment with the cotton varieties preferred by French commercial interests, many resisted attempts to control their cultivation efforts, hedging their bets based on shifts in markets prices, changes in climatic conditions or experience with pest infestations. Using reports to the League of Nations, official mandate publications, archival materials, and the National Bloc newspaper al-Qabas, this paper seeks to explore the tensions and struggles that arose between officials and farmers over the project of cotton cultivation. In particular, it will examine how mandate officials' discourse represented local farmers and their relationship to the environment as these farmers responded to the exigencies of on-the-ground practical, economic, ecological and climatic realities. By tracing the vicissitudes in cotton cultivation alongside these contestations over agricultural priorities, the paper aims to demonstrate how despite the dissonance between rhetoric and practice, the project of cultivating cotton would nonetheless produce a particular agricultural space with far-reaching impacts.