Organic Cotton Fibre
Non-organic cotton: BAD
Think about cotton fibres. They're natural, clean, fluffy and white – the picture postcard of healthy, environmentally friendly materials.
Unfortunately, nearly all cotton production is hugely (and increasingly) reliant on pesticides derived from petrochemicals.
In fact, 2.5% of all farmland worldwide is used to grow cotton, yet 10% of all chemical pesticides and 22% of insecticides are sprayed on cotton. Do a bit of maths, and you find that eight times more pesticide is used on one hectare of conventional cotton, than on other crops. (Now imagine dipping that fluffy bud of cotton in a vat of crude oil.)
Ok, so loads of chemicals are used on cotton, but are they so bad? Well, yes. They're awful. Here's why:
- Environmental destruction
Heavy pesticide use reduces biodiversity, disrupts ecosystems, and contaminates water supplies. Worse still, pests exposed to synthetic pesticides build up a resistance to them. So each year, farmers have to buy and use more pesticides to grow the same amount of cotton – increasing the annual damage to the environment. - Spiral of debt
Pests build up resistance to chemicals, farmer borrows money to buy more chemicals than before, farmer gets less profit from crop, repeat until farmer is destitute. In parts of India agricultural chemicals take up 60% of the farmer's production budget. In Maharashtra alone, the government estimates that over 1,000 farmers have committed suicide since 2001 because they were irrevocably in debt. - Health
Many chemicals used in cotton farming are acutely toxic. At least three of them are in the "dirty dozen" – so dangerous that 120 countries agreed at a UNEP conference in 2001 to ban them. So far this hasn't happened. The World Trade Organisation estimates 20,000 deaths and three million chronic health problems each year are the result of the use of agricultural pesticides in developing countries.
If that wasn't enough, conventional cotton farming also uses vast amounts of precious water. The Aral Sea has almost disappeared as the water courses that flowed into it have been diverted to grow ‘white gold' in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
This has been catastrophic for the fishing industries in those countries, and has also proved totally unsustainable. Years of rapid saturation/evaporation in these semi-desert soils has left salt residues, making the land unfertile.
Organic Cotton: GOOD
Organic cotton farming is not only less destructive to the environment, but provides better income for farmers and is sustainable long term.
- Environmentally friendly
Organic cotton farming uses natural pesticides (usually containing a mixture of chilli, garlic and soap). This keeps pests off the crops, but does not destroy their natural predators – which survive to control their numbers naturally. Intercropping is also used. This is where secondary crops (often sunflowers or millet) are grown between and around small plots of cotton. These create a natural barrier against the boll weevils, which cannot sniff out their favourite snack through the extra foliage. (These secondary crops may also provide another cash crop or food for the farmers, a useful backup in case of a poor cotton harvest.) In stark contrast to conventional methods, this way of farming actually promotes biodiversity; organic cotton fields contain a significantly higher number of insect species (especially those that are beneficial). - Farmer friendly
Clued-up people like your good self are prepared to pay a bit more for the quality and provenance of organic cotton. That's why we can pay our organic cotton farmers a 30% premium above conventional cotton prices. We also commit to buying the cotton before the crop is grown, so farmers have security of income too. Our cotton is produced by a group called Agrocel in Gujarat, India, which works with 20,000 small-scale farmers, using Fair Trade principles to support them in the conversion to organic farming. We think that makes organic cotton all the more worth the extra money. - Sustainable
Unlike the insatiably thirsty conventional methods of cotton production, our organic cotton is largely rain-fed. The soils are fertilised with natural organic materials, which help to give the soil higher humus content – making it better able to retain moisture and its fertility.
People Tree's Organic Cotton Declaration
Bangladesh Organic Cotton Campaign
The final word
So, it should be pretty clear why organic cotton fibre is infinitely preferable to the conventionally produced stuff. But just in case you need a reminder, we'll leave the summary to Ram Kalaspurkar, an organic cotton farmer from Maharashtra, India:
By buying an organic cotton T-shirt or bed sheet you are giving us the chance to re-establish our natural farming system in a way that is not hazardous to coming generations and the soil that nourishes us all.
