Poisoned any farmers recently, darling?
Can you help us bring organic cotton to Bangladesh?
Please email this blog to a friend to campaign for organic cotton in Bangladesh.
More than 50% of People Tree's clothing is made from organic cotton grown in India - for good reason. Organic cotton protects the environment from damaging chemical pesticides, including some banned by the WHO (World Health Organisation), it also helps farmers take control over their land and escape from debt to the seed and chemical companies. Cotton crops are becoming increasingly pest-resistant - each year they need to spray more and more pesticides to achieve the same yield. Shockingly, the Hindu regularly carries a count of cotton farmer suicides, those driven to the edge and facing bankruptcy as they cannot pay their debts. Problems are becoming acute due to pest resistance and US cotton subsidies of £3 billion a year – deflating the average cotton price by 25%.
Last week I was in Bangladesh, with NHK TV (the equivalent of BBC TV in Japan), who have decided to film me on my mission to start an organic cotton project in Bangladesh.
Why organic cotton?
Today Bangladesh is famous for its garment factories, but surprisingly, produces only 2% of its own cotton. Cotton comes from India, Pakistan and China, and synthetic fabrics are imported from Korea, China, Hong Kong and other countries and made in to clothes using Bangladeshi cheap labour. I visited the conventional cotton-growing areas of Tangail, to ask farmers about the barriers keeping them from growing cotton organically in Bangladesh.
Abdul Mojit, a farmer in his 40s, who grows rice and cotton, explained how he could see the harvest decreasing each year and had no choice but to spray more chemicals. Without any information and training he felt he couldn't take the risk of not spraying chemicals, as the crop would surely fail. Abdul and six other friends described how they often felt sick and dizzy during the days they used chemicals, frequently ending the day with a terrible headache, feeling lethargic and vomiting. They use chemical pesticides called Ripcot and Esodene. The farmers are often illiterate and so cannot read the instructions on the packaging. This is often the case for toxic chemicals used in the developing world.
Many of the farmers I visited had deformed fingernails, which may be caused by applying chemical fertilisers by hand. They didn’t wash their hands between handling the fertilisiser pellets and eating snacks during they day! During the cotton growing season they have to spray 7 to 8 times every 3 weeks.
Mr Monydeen explained how he felt it was like a slow poison and how he would love to try to go back to the way his ancestors farmed, organically, if it was better for his health and protected the environment; but needed training to learn how to do this. This would benefit farmers’ health too as their own food crops would then also be grown organically. An organic agricultural revolution could be kick-started simply by starting organic cotton projects in Bangladesh!
People say “yes!”
I visited people from the government, business and the NGO sectors; we got commitment to put 7 pieces of land under organic cotton to pilot the project. Excitingly, Swallows, one of People Tree's key partners, is already heading the Sustainable Agriculture Network and agreed that will bring a much needed cash income and social support to some of the poorest farmers living on 'char' land. ‘Char’ sits in the river and becomes larger after flooding for seven months of the year and is highly fertile.
The Fair Trade and social business movements are so full of dynamism and shared values that before long we had agreement for training six agricultural extension workers from Bangladesh to join an organic cotton farming training course in India - with People Tree’s organic cotton partner. They will learn how to prepare of the soil and organic fertilizers as well as learning about Fair Trade.
People Tree will support the project and commit to buying the cotton grown organically in the future. We are hoping to raise about £4,000 minimum to cover the initial travel and training costs for agriculture extension workers from Bangladesh and get the ball rolling.
I wonder if you can help?
If you can help with a donation, please send a cheque to us at People Tree made out to People Tree (Project Support) or call our sales team on 020 7739 0660 or 0845 450 4595 to give a donation by credit or debit card. Do send us your details as well, so we can let you know how the project is going.
