The first organic cotton harvest in Bangladesh
Maqsood Sinha from Waste Concern, Safia, Mr. Sharifur Rahma from Mohipur Agriculture Training
Institute (MATI) and Iftekhar Enayetullah from Waste Concern, one of People Tree’s pilot cotton projects in Bogra, Bangladesh
Bangladesh grows 2% of its cotton needs and People Tree is working to convert this into organic, Fair Trade cotton. Working closely with its organic cotton partner Agrocel last year we trained three agriculturalists from Bangladesh at Agrocel in India. These workers then returned to their areas and started the two pilot projects, one at Waste Concern in Bogra and the second at Swallows in Thanapara.
These pilot projects have been successful, resulting in a staple length of 28 mm (the same as our Indian organic cotton) which is great news and we are very much looking forward to scaling them up, bringing these techniques to farmers, protecting their health and the environment.
Masud Rana, Raihan Ali, Huda Mandol and Deb Kumar Nath from Swallows where the second organic cotton project was planted
The next challenge is to take the seeds out of the organic cotton and we decided to use a small hand powered ginning machine still used in the tribal areas of Bangladesh today.
One of the ginning machines that will be used to remove the seeds from the organic cotton.
Once the seeds have been taken out you only have 1/3 of the cotton weight left. The seeds are then saved for sewing in late June. When surplus seeds are available they provide a nutritious addition to the livestock’s feed.
The next challenge is spinning the fibre into yarn, dying it, weaving and finally tailoring the garments, all of which we are planning to do at Swallows in Thanapara, Bangladesh
Roksana shows Safia how the yarn is spun
Rumana peeps through freshly dyed yarn at Swallows
The thread will then be hand woven; the women will produce between 4-7m metres of fabric per day.
Finally the cloth will be tailored into finished garments. (Photo courtesy of Miki Alcalde)
Swallows also does beautiful traditional Nokshi Kantha embroidery
This is one of my favourites, sometimes we have to be a little more restrained when it comes to our fashion items.
These tunics made at Swallows will be available in our High Summer 2008 catalogue and have more subtle nokshi kantha embroidery on the straps and across the top band.
Safia at Swallows school which is funded from profits from the sale of Fair Trade products.
Profits from the sale of Fair Trade products from Swallows are reinvested into the handicraft centre to create jobs and training as well as into a school for 300 children from the local villages and a day care centre for the 60 preschool children of the women who work at the handicraft centre.
Safia and Liz Jones (above) and Mayumi Ishi (left) and Miki Alcalde (right), media friends who came to Bangladesh to document the first organic cotton harvest and learn more about Fair Trade.
Miki cheats during studies with nine year olds – still, he speaks better Bangla than me!
Comments