By Delia Montgomery
Think cotton. Cool, soft, comfortable, … “the fabric of our lives.” But as you’ve probably heard, cotton cultivation inflicts a heavy toll on our environment. Yet its production is one of the major factors in global economic stability. The fear of running out of soil and land to grow cotton is not a pretty picture for fortune tellers, politicians or agriculture.
Fortunately, an increasing number of farmers are growing cotton organically. They eliminate toxic chemicals in every step of the growing process and therefore have far less impact on earth than conventional cotton farmers. Their practical solutions are crucial for the land we pass on to our children and grandchildren.In 1990, only 900 acres of organic cotton were planted in the United States. Six states during 2000 planted 13,460 acres of organic cotton. That year was the first time Kansas grew organic cotton. The Organic Trade Association (OTA) believed the acreage would have been much higher if it weren’t for boll weevil eradication requirements. Farmers were mandated to spray pesticides not approved for use in organic production, losing their organic certification status. Thus the lower harvest figure in 2000 was 10,799 acres of organic cotton.
Early 2002 Turkey was the leading organic cotton producer of the world. The U.S. was next with Texas and California being the primary providers. Other suppliers were in Africa, mainly Uganda, some in Egypt, as well as India, Latin America, mostly Peru, and Israel.
Admirable businesses such as Patagonia in California and Nike in Oregon are organic cotton pioneers. Commendable especially because they shared their experiences and knowledge with others. They gained market advantages with their environmental leadership. And as a result, retailers are profitably incorporating organic cotton into their inventory.
The OTA reported in their 2001 Manufacturers’ Market Survey that products made from organic cotton, wool, or other fiber crops grew by 11 percent. The survey projected an average annual growth rate of 44 percent during 2000 to 2005, which pretty well happened.
In 1997 big business purchased 2.15 million pounds of organic cotton. That eliminated an estimated 43,000 pounds of pesticides and 485,190 pounds of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Such facts caught the attention of young design students and CEOs, (fortune tellers and politicians too).
Market analysts projected corporate responsibility to be a matter of basic business practice and implementing organic cotton made sense. Business people woke up to the fact that each t-shirt made from all organic cotton saved one-third of a pound of synthetic fertilizers and farm chemicals.
Companies who made the switch to organic cotton reported that employees were inspired, motivated and energized by the challenge. Nice to enjoy one’s work! In fact everyone working with organic cotton ‒ from farmers to tailors, began to breathe easier and living healthier lives.
Organic cotton blends well with other natural fibers such as hemp, flax (linen), silk or wool. Why there are zero-known organic cotton growers in the entire state of Hawaii baffles me. Finished products are cheaper from India or Turkey, but for small-scale suppliers and designers, this could be a Hawaiian-made niche.
I’ll write about color-grown organic cotton in the future. It’s been growing well in Peru for centuries and became popular more than a decade ago by farmer Sally Fox who developed Foxfibre® in California. Meanwhile, related comments are welcome and I dearly hope that any Hawaiian organic cotton growers out there introduce themselves and share their experiences.
Delia is a BIC contributing editor who writes about environmental arts.
November 9th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
For those of us who lived in the proximity of the San Juaquin Valley and the Antelope Valley, and who drove the 99 from time to time back in the early 60′s…cotton fields provided an educational opportunity! My folks would take us by the fields after harvest was complete so we could pick up the cotton that had blown towards the highway. We got gobs of it. Took it home and worked with it from its dirty, burr filled raw rolled around in the dirt look to a pristine bunch of perfectly cleaned angel hair! We made all sorts of Christmas decorations with it. We got it early in the season so we would have time to make the neat decorations. My folks were smart, keep the kids busy and excited as they worked it out to angel hair and then make the decorations and give them to family and friends for their holiday decor. So much fun. Hard to think I actually enjoyed doing it I am so NOT a crafts person!!
What a memory…thanks for the childhood indulgence.
November 10th, 2010 at 7:11 am
I just love it Delia,
here is Nike patting themself’s on the back for using a few pounds of organic cotton trying to give themself this false image of being Mr. Green. When in reality they run sweatshops in third world countries employing and exploiting child labor. Well we give them the press that they want so they must be right.
The Lack
November 10th, 2010 at 7:39 am
RE Nike, see http://www.nikebiz.com/responsibility/considered_design/environmentally_preferred.html and scroll down to ORGANIC COTTON. The positive company shift occurred partially during the sweatshop condemnation publicity. This is a story of needing big business to make ethical changes happen in order for small companies to catch the green wave at all. More $ market reporting on Nike/Walmart/Organic cotton here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=129299
Nice sentiments Toni
A friend of a friend told me they found a cotton plant around Kona. It grows here somewhere and if you find it, I’ll help decorate your holiday tree!
November 10th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Shifting to ‘organic” and pretending it resolves the two primary issues; bioshere degradation and human degradation, is by definition GREENWASHING.
There is nothing in Delia’s post links that adresses Tom’s righteous concern for the workers –
in the field,
in the sweatshops
and in the stores
(where many workers are getting foodstamps…I’m glad they get them..but it is government subsidizing the wealthiest corporations).
“Organic” monoculture precludes thediversity required for healthy farming, still reies on the heavy use of fossil fuels;
on the farm,
in shipping,
in production,
in packaging,
in retailing
There is one reference (in Delia’s links) to the
“livelyhood of the farmers”. These farmers are mostly large businesses (not your small family farm)
that require monoculture and cheap labor for profit.
Less corporate consumption, organic or not,
and more local production of food and fiber ensures
local abundance and true sustainability, if that is still possible.
Some will say this model won’t produce good paying jobs.
Yes, they are correct.
This brings us to the paradoxes of changing the economic system while still within the dominant (but collapsing) system.
Corporate Organic cotton, per se, provides very marginal benefit toward a viable future, IMO.
Yes, lets grow fiber, organically, in and for Hawaii.
November 11th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Nike is selling and your buying it Delia. They spend more money telling everyone that they are the “Green Machine” than they actually spend being green. Nike spells profit and if they could sell snow seal pelt lined sneakers they would. They are smart enough to know that this world of politically correctness is their only challenge and ecology is the key word in success.
There answer:
Let’s do Tee shirts!! We will spend a few hundred million to advocate organic grown cotton and let people like Tiger Woods wear a few of them and say how comfortable they are. In the mean time we have to make that few hundred million so we will quietly run our sweatshops in third world countries using child labor. Now at two dollars for a twelve hour day by a child building sneakers at one hundred and eighty bucks a pair retail should do it.
Now the Nike fat boys deposit in their off shore accounts and the child gets to eat a bowl of rice at the end of a good days work. Gee, and you by it because “THEY” said so on “THEIR” web site.
The Lack
November 11th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Delia,
I liked you piece on the junk yard end tables,
now that’s honest.
The Lack
November 11th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Interesting notion that I am a proponent of big business. My actual issue is questioning why there are zero-known organic cotton growers in the entire state of Hawaii while the climate zones here outweigh California and Texas. Could pesticide-free cotton grown by local farmers be sustainable agriculture for Big Islanders?
November 11th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
YES, cotton growing can be sustainable;
IF it is part of an integrated polyculture
(NOT monoculture) using low fuel farming techniques.
If is not shipped anywhere outside Hawaii.
If the product doesn’t need to compete within Global
Capitalism.
We are submerged in an economic system that
CANNOT value the Biosphere (Earth),
requires unlimited growth,
and so cannot be SUSTAINABLE,
by definition! Pesticides or not!
This is the conundrum for farming,
and all our ‘productive’ activities.
Everything needs rethinking.
November 11th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
“Could pesticide-free cotton grown by local farmers be sustainable agriculture for Big Islanders?”
Peter’s point(s) about the challenge and need for major transformation are well taken.
In any case, we can only start from where we are.
The hotter, sunnier parts of this island could (do) allow for growing of Gossypium hirsutum (cotton).
For a farmer to do this for their livelihood, someone must want that cotton and be prepared to reward the farmer for growing it — a market is going to need to be there. That is where someone like you, Delia, with your knowledge of the market, would need to work with the grower.
November 11th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
My recollection, as the grandson of West Texas cotton farmers is that there is an economy of scale to be overcome for commercial growing of cotton, as well as the question of processing. Cotton fiber needs to be separated from its seeds (which can be used to make oil) and that’s not easy.
It also has to be picked, which would require a major investment in equipment unless you can find a bunch of people willing to do back-breaking work for low wages.
November 11th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Here’s an informative link:
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Cotton.html
November 11th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Thanks Mike- Good overview.
The question remains, how to grow and use fibers sustainably.
Cotton production, as we know it, even ‘organic’, doesn’t meet the requirements (listed above) for sustainability.
Why grow fiber?
Because it is useful
(and fun -see Toni post above).
So how do we take the growing of something useful OUT of the dominant economy, where it will ONLY be produced with multiple severe damages to land & people.
Same must be said for food.
What are the ways we can feed ourselves that will allow for our Biosphere to flourish?
Question and answers that presume as fixed the present economic framework divert our attention.
November 13th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
To answer Delia’s question about cotton growing in Hawaii, it won’t happen for the same reason there won’t be local wheat grown here. Such large-scale commodity crops require cheap land and cheap labor.
All things being equal, organic is better than commercially grown crops, and organic cotton is well worth supporting, to avoid the pesticide use. Commenters above are right that Nike is greenwashing its sweat shop profitability, but companies like Patagonia deserve great credit for game-changing innovations, including fair-trade and used recycled as well as organic materials, and treating their employees with respect.
November 14th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
@ Russell, can you agree that the “all things being equal” is that both non-organic commercial growning and organic commercial growning of products and their processing, shipping and marketing are unsustainable practices?
If they are unsustainable I don’t understand why either “is well worth supporting”.
Don’t I risk a false reassurance when I, like I recently did, buy organic flannel sheets from Dragon Mamas.
I just love Dragon Mamas and my new flannel sheets.
But I can’t pretend it made anything more sustainable,
really, if a full accounting is made.
As you might quess I buy mostly organic food.
But I can’t comfort myself with the false idea that it makes more than a hint of difference to the collapsing bioshpere.
I do really appreciate your support of the LOCAVORE movement, prioritizing locally grown stuff on the shelves.
Out of necessity, that is the future, eventually perhaps even reducing the need for centralized food stores.
November 14th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
What mackenzie is talking about here is something most of us don’t quite get put into words. Questioning one’s own behavior along with the rest of the mess is a good and necessary step.
Really, I wonder about the notion that buying ‘organic’ whatever does not make “more than a hint of difference to the collapsing bioshpere”? Only a “hint”?
Russell’s point about the land and labor to produce cotton is well taken. I grew up working hard in a tobacco patch and knew that it could be worse: a cotton field, a sawmill, or a coal mine.
However, as for “economy of scale”, that changes. Can it change enough?
More than economy of scale, it is climate that prevents wheat being produced here, in contrast to organic rice or beans.
November 16th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Mac, when you bought your organic sheets, your choice was organic or non-organic. Organic supported the growth of organic farming, which removes poisons from our world compared to non-organic. These poisons are significant, and organic farming offers a way toward sustainability. Organic farmers are part of the solution, and deserve our support. The alternative to supporting organic is surrendering to Monsanto. Each organic purchase is a vote. Voting for the most sustainable option at each point is way better than voting the other way. So for me, organic farming is indeed “Well worth supporting” along with (not instead of) every other effort toward sustainability. Until you are spinning your own fabric at home, it’s the best we can do. And the act of doing something good is much better than encouraging the attitude that it’s all useless. That’s not a false sense of security, it’s being part of the solution. Thanks for voting for the environment with your organic purchases!
November 16th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
@Russell – Actually a third, maybe best choice of mine would have been to not buy new sheets at all.
(re: your !st point, as far as I know only
bio-remediation with fungus or certain waterplants remove poisons, so no, commercial organic agriculture removes no poison.)
But I have an accounting problem.
One measurement of pollution, especially CO2 emmisions, is the “carbon footprint” of any activity.
While some natural scientists say that we have already done irreparable damage to the bioshpere lets assume for the moment that we haven’t gone past the point of no return.
I’m no accountant but I think
if we take the whole “carbon foot print” of commercial organic agriculture and compare it, pound for pound, with commercial non-organic agriculture there is very little difference. The accounting method would include everything;
manufacturing of, distribution of, and operating
the petrol run farm equipment to til, plant, weed, and harvest the crop.
Processing, importation and insertion of soil nutrients.
Storing the crop.
The manufacturing of the packaging for the crop,
the trucking in of the packaging for the crop,
then packaging the crop.
Transportation of the crop; from farm to warehouse to
central transportation hub (to factory for ‘value added processing’) to airport or docks to destination transportation hubs, then to stores. Probably left something out.
Then, add to that footprint, the (usually) petrol energy that the store uses, its’ employees and its customers use to get to and from the store.
A full accounting probably includes even more.
While Ag pesticides are evil, my quess is that they account for but a fraction of the petro chemicles used in commercial food/fiber production.
I think it is a false choice..”buy organic or surrender to monsanto”. This is classic greenwashing.
Communities need to retool ENTIRELY to have sustainable food security.
Humans are, right now, consuming 150% of the earths productive capacity. Commercial (organic) agriculture does NOTHING to address that. It is simply NOT sustainable.
Which means we need to use our best thinking to redesign how we feed ourselves.
There is no “buying” our way to sustainability.
I never encouraged the attitude that it is all useless.
Just the opposite.
Now IS the time to reinvent.
But unless we see the situation clearly, with full accounting, we cannot create the real solutions. and indeed we ARE left with a false sense of security.
I am a small time orgainic gardener myself (tho I give most of my fruit and veggies away), but I’m not deluded into thinking thats anywhere close to enough.
I still drive a car, and consume modern products.
This will take a collective effort, in addition to personal choice, to slash our carbon footprint.
November 16th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Think cotton
cool
soft
comfortable
March 31st, 2011 at 5:13 pm
I am a budding entrepreneur with the dream of growing and raising the raw goods to hand-make wedding and island-wear in Hawaii. I am VERY interested in what it would take to grow organic cotton in Hawaii as well as hemp and any other fiber or animal like angora rabbits. I believe that if something can be produced locally it should be and in an environmentally sound way. Even if I could only produce enough to provide the yarn and thread needed to make my items it would still make a difference environmentally and economically.
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