Consumer guide

The many faces of cotton

Most of us think of cotton as a soft natural textile which exudes health and is cheap to buy. But your cotton t-shirt has a dirty secret.

Cotton is the most universal of textile fibres, associated with purity and positive natural qualities, but one of our most widely used crops to make apparel products has an alarming statistic: Cotton is a fragile crop that requires large amounts of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. In developing countries, around 50% of pesticides used are for cotton cultivation. This leads to pollution of soil and drinking water, poisoning, and structural debts for farmers. Its cultivation also uses vast amounts of water. Irrigation is required for three-quarters of global cotton production. The fact that many poor farmers still use DDT, which has been forbidden for a long time in industrialized countries, is not exactly a nice thought. Its cultivation also uses vast amounts of water. Irrigation is required for three-quarters of global cotton production. In countries that already lack adequate water-supplies, this adds to the problem.

Organic cotton is growing in leaps and bounds

The general stumbling-block for organic cotton has been the small input. But organic cotton is growing in leaps and bounds, and a new initiative in India may ensure even more being available . Organic cotton is grown without the use of chemicals, and crops are rotated to keep the soil healthy. The recent news that India plans to target a ten-fold increase in organic product manufacturing by 2012, is quite a boost for the organic cotton industry. Based on the fact that about 60 % of India's agricultural land is said to be organic by default, since the intensive use of chemicals is mainly concentrated in the country's irrigated areas - the Indian government plans to speed up the slow pace of certification of organic zones. But GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) has reported that the increased interest in Organic cotton has a down-side: Fake certifications and opportunistic farmers out to make quick money.

There is also Fairtrade cotton, where the farmers are paid a better premium for their crops and where social initiatives ensure better local infrastructures. Since farmers in many poor countries borrow money in order to afford seeds, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers they end up in a hopeless spiral of owing more and more money, and Clean Clothes Campaign have uncovered that suicides in many of these communitites are a direct result of these horrible conditions.

Which brings us to Better Cotton Initiative and  BASIC cotton (see Related Links, Cleaner Cotton), the latter claims to have reduced pesticide use with 70 %. The former initiative involves several of the world's largest purchasers of cotton (Levi's and H&M are among them), and is also making major steps in the cotton field. In Pakistan alone they have schooled 80,000 farners so far (2009) and as a result pesticide and water use is down 50 %, fertilizers have been reduced with 30 % and earnings are up 40 %.

There is a lot of discussion around GM/GMO cotton, which is genetically manipulated cotton in case you didn't know. The up-side is of course that GM/GMO cotton needs hardly any pesticides, herbicides or fungicides since they are bred to withstand pests and to survive drought-periods. So water-management gets thumbs-up. The organic community is not so happy, and refuses to use GM/GMO cotton. Some will argue that no seed on earth today is not genetically manipulated, through selection, since we generally demand as white cotton as possible with the best staple length. Colored cotton has also been developed and farmed, but what constitutes "genetically manipulated" vs "natural selection" is still being discussed.