(This post comprises a question from a student, following a conference at Leeds University, with a reply by William Lana of Greenfibres, who spoke at the conference.)
Dear William Lana,
My name is L*** C*** and I am a third year student at Leeds university studying textiles for fashion. I am writing my dissertation on organic cotton and whether it can replace traditional cotton. I went to the conference in Leeds on Sustainable textiles and I was interested in what you said about organic cotton. I was wondering if you would be able to answer a few questions for my research? I have asked exactly the same questions to Dr Richard Blackburn and I wanted to compare your responses.
1. At the conference Dr Richard Blackburn, from Leeds University had different information to you, stating that organic cotton could not replace traditional cotton, what are your views on this?
2. Why do you think you had different information, and how do you know which is reliable?
3. Where do you get your figures from?
4. Phil Patterson from marks and Spencer spoke about organic production during the French revolution, why do you think we failed to continue producing cotton in this way?
5. What future do you see in organic cotton?
I would be very greatful for any help, thank you for your time.
L C
Hi L***,
Thanks for your email.
I do not have much time at the moment, but you are very welcome to visit our business and spend as long as you would like looking through 60 or 70 documents I have accumulated on organic vs. conventional cotton over the
past 10 years and deciding what is relevant to put into your dissertation... but I'll give you some quick thought shere...
When considering whether organic cotton can replace conventional cotton we need to know whom you are answering the question for? A western consumer? An Uzbek school girl forced to work on conventional cotton fields during harvest time every year? A Chinese cotton farmer exposed to appalling conditions of poverty and helplessness? Who wants to know? So - as I'm sure you will - make sure you identify what you mean by: can organic cotton replace traditional cotton.
It sounds like you want to look at the very specific question of: if I take the same cotton seed in the same conditions and the same farmer grows it in the same year, will I have more lint There are a number of issues (as well
as yield) that we need to think about...
What are the economic implications of conventional cotton -
- for the farmer: price of seed, chemical fertiliser, direct health effects of farm workers, soil erosion, etc.?
- for the surrounding community: pesticide laden water tables, existing systems to get cotton to market which are full of extortion and corruption?
- the health of the community?
- For the wider community who must deal with the outputs of the conventional cotton industry?
Likewise, what are the economics of organic cotton -
- What can a field produce on its edges where the two types of cotton are grown (or what is the total economic and social revenue from that field for the farmer and for the earth?) because a lot of subsistence farming in developing countries happens at the edges.
- What are we trying to achieve by asking that question? And can we answer it properly at this stage? Will the answer help to design a new eco textile industry? If we come to the conclusion that under certain conditions organic cotton will not produce the same yield, might it still be better to accept that reduction in yield in favour of the benefits?
1. At the conference Dr Richard Blackburn, from Leeds University had different information to you, stating that organic cotton could not replace traditional cotton, what are your views on this?It was the first eco textile conference held in the UK. I think we got drawn into a simplistic answer, where there is none. I think Dr. Blackburn and I have more similar positions that that exchange could allude to. There
is a lot of early data out there, much of which has not been reviewed carefully. We're at the beginning stages of the emerging eco textile industry. In the coming years I'm sure clearer information will become available.
2. Why do you think you had different information, and how do you know which is reliable?There are not many questions that have one answer... especially not ones that are new, and where there is little funding to research them. Why are there different figures around? Well there are always 2 sides to a coin.
You have to do the research for yourself and decide what you believe. How do you know anything is reliable? I like to know who a piece of research is by, why they are asking that question, if they have anything personally to
gain from the research, who is funding the work, where is it published, those kinds of question help to decide what I consider reliable. But at the end of the day you have to decide.
3.Where do you get your figures from?Unfortunately I do not have all of the source material for my position properly documented. I appreciate this does not sound very academically rigorous but it is a product of trying to keep a green company a float as well as support a growing organic textile industry. As I said earlier you are welcome to come down to our offices and look through the material I have here.
Some of my information comes from the
Pesticides Action NetworkThere have been studies done to investigate the economic viability of organic cotton farming and its impact on farmers, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the WWF Switzerland mandated the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) conducted a detailed study of the Maikaal bioRe project in central India over a period of 2 years, and collected and compared agronomic data on 60 organic and conventional farms.
They found the organic producers benefited from:
- 40% lower costs for inputs
- 13-20% lower variable production costs
- a far lower need to take up loans
- total labour inputs that were not significantly higher and
- 4-6% higher average cotton yields
(this was recorded in a number of places but where I first found it was in the story: "Economic viability of organic cotton" The Hindu (newspaper), 28 September 2006)
But in 1993 the US based INTERNATIONAL COTTON ADVISORY COMMITTEE produced a paper called: Suitable Varieties for Organic Cotton Production Paper Presented at the International Conference on Organic Cotton in Cairo, Egypt, September 23-25, 1993.
Part of their conclusions were -
- Presently grown commercial varieties of cotton have been developed to give optimum yield under high doses of fertilizers and stringent plant protection measures.
- New varieties need to be developed for organic cotton production. The breeding objectives would be better tolerance to insect pests and diseases and maintaining a high yield level without any synthetic fertilizers.
So is it fair to take varieties of cotton selected to give optimum yields under conventional farming methods and say that organic cotton doesn't work when these varieties don't perform?
It is certainly difficult to make generalisations about cotton yields since the findings are dependent on so many variables. In some circumstances, with certain environmental conditions, different types of cotton grow better, over a measured period of t ime. This isn't to say we can't make statements about cotton growing or about economic outcomes of growing cotton, but the usefulness of such statements has to be put into a context and the importance of that context shouldn't be understated.
Then there is the whole question of GM cotton, which I appreciate you, are not looking at but which must be considered properly by any Eco Textile Network Organisation...
4. Phil Patterson from Marks & Spencer spoke about organic production during the French revolution, why do you think we failed to continue producing cotton in this way?I would direct you to the 2 volume work: "The Cambridge History of Western Textiles" ed. David Jenkins ... is massive and quite boring, but very informative. There are too many reasons why we failed to continue farming
organically in the past 70 years ... certainly the short term increase in yield of crops generally achieved by using intensive chemical farming models was one reason, but there were many others.
5. What future do you see in organic cotton?When you start looking seriously at the benefits of organic cotton (as I'm sure you will) and compare it to some information about conventional cotton, then I think the data proves a moral imperative to switch all conventional
production to organic. Here is one paragraph I found about women's empowerment through organic cotton:
"Cotton production in West Africa is often regarded as a men's affair. However, women are very much involved in the time-consuming operations of weeding and harvesting - on family fields. Women do not often have their owncotton fields because they have little access to inputs for cotton production. The cotton inputs are distributed through village producer organisations. Women in Benin are hardly represented in the boards of theseproducers' organisations, and they may not even be entitled to become a member - for socio-cultural reasons.Organic cotton production is very interesting to women, because they can now use inputs which are locally available (organic manure, botanical insecticides) at little or no cost. They can thus grow the cash crop cottonwithout being dependent on the male-dominated village producer organisations. Also, pregnant and nursing women are able to produce cotton organically without having to fear for the health hazards, to themselves andto their child, of the use of synthetic pesticides."(quoted from http://www.biocoton.com )The WWF has also shown that organic cotton leads to greater water retention in the soil. This means that - when grown organically - a thirsty cotton crop isn't quite as thirsty.
What future in organic cotton... well let's look a small part of one processing stage of conventional cotton... harvesting. I could write about the horrific conditions under which the conventional cotton industry operates in the Central Asian Republics, especially Uzbekistan, and especially at harvest time, but if you want to find out more about this please see the cotton section on the
Environmental Justice Foundation site .
In a Western country like the USA, cotton harvesting uses a variety of harvest-aids such as spraying cotton fields with chemicals like thidiazuron to defoliate cotton plants by removing mature and juvenile leaves to facilitate machine harvesting, and suppress growth of new plant leaves. Also used are desiccants containing pyraflufen ethyl, carfentrazon, dimethipin, paraquat, and glyphosate to kill and dry leaves remaining on the cotton plants and weeds after chemical defoliation, and chemicals containing the active ingredient ethephon to accelerate the opening of the cotton bolls.
Going back to the positive, there are also many stories about increased opportunities for primary and secondary education in communities where organic cotton has replaced conventional cotton; there are also stories of
seed exchange programmes have sprung up and farmers training schools being established. Wherever you look organic cotton farmers report a general increase in the quality of life and well-being of their family and their
communities. (A good place to look at would be what has been happening with the SEKEN project in Egypt for the last 25 years.)
We should also remember you are asking me for input on the question whether organic cotton can replace conventional cotton, but I am primarily concerned with why organic cotton should (in my view must) replace conventional cotton if we are going to dig ourselves out of this current ecological disaster we are in. I don't know how familiar you are with the observation of 'peak oil', but all of that synthetic fertiliser used on cotton is going to increase dramatically in price over the next 30 years. 84-million pounds of pesticides and 2.03 billion pounds of synthetic fertilizer were applied to 14.4-million acres of conventionally grown cotton in the United States alone
in 2000... as oil increases in price there will be less and less conventional cotton grown in the world.
For me the question isn't can it replace conventional cotton, it is will we as a society wake up in time to save the future for our children? Organic cotton is only one tiny part of the solution, but if there is no future for
organic cotton, there is no future for humanity.
Hope that helps, you should also try to have a look at:
The international market for organic cotton and eco-textilesA report for PAN UK's Pesticides Poverty and Livelihoods project (Peter Ton, Organic Cotton Consultant - August 2002)
Organic Cotton: From Field to Final to Final Product (Edited by Dorothy
Myers and Sue Stolton, 1999) a few of the opening paragraphs are quoted
below.
National Sustainable Agriculture Service"Throughout the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, cotton is a major cash crop, and cotton production and processing is an important source of income at household level for many millions of small farmers - as well as
being a source of foreign exchange at national level. In many countries therefore, strenuous efforts have been made to increase production, mainly by increasing yields through the intensive use of chemical inputs, irrigation and the use of higher-yielding varieties.
Improvements in cotton fibre output have generally been regarded as beneficial by those involved, including the farmers, but they have also involved costs, both environmental and social, which have not been reflected
in cotton pricing and which have seriously affected people's livelihoods, health and environment. Indeed, despite its 'natural' image, cotton production has become increasingly associated with severe negative environmental impacts which include reduced soil fertility, salinization, a loss of biodiversity, water pollution, adverse changes in water balance, and pesticide-related problems including resistance. Social costs include, for example, severe health problems related to the heavy use of acutely toxic pesticides especially in countries where regulatory systems are weak or unenforceable and safe use almost impossible. Even economically, farmers are not necessarily better off due to high production costs, and in some situations they are unable to select alternative crops or production
systems.
Environmental and health costs also arise at other stages in the cotton chain. Cotton processing is a very resource-consuming, polluting and unhealthy industry. Large amounts of water, energy and chemicals are used at
the different processing stages. Inputs required for processing usually find their way into the local waste water systems, resulting in highly contaminated effluents. Most effluents from cotton processing arise in the finishing stage and are characterized by their highly polluting load, high solid content and high temperature. In Sweden, for instance, every kilogram of textiles manufactured uses almost half a kilogram of chemical, most of which ends up in waste water. Chemicals can also remain in the final product, which can cause health problems. In the user or consumer phase, environmental problems arise from the use of energy, water and chemicals for washing, drying and ironing. Further environmental damage occurs in the transportation stages of the cotton chain as fibre, yarn, fabrics and finished textiles are moved around the world at different stages in production."
Finally, good luck with your dissertation, I would be very interested in reading it when you've finished since not many people have looked specifically at that question!
Please keep in touch.
William Lana
G R E E N F I B R E S
99 high street, totnes,
devon tq9 5pf uk
t: 01803 868 001 f: 01803 868 002
www.greenfibres.com"Consumers pay three times when they buy intensively farmed food. Firstly they pay at the shop till. Next, they pay for the same food through their taxes, as modern farming is subsidised through the tax system. Thirdly, the consumer pays again to clean up the damage to the environment caused during the growing and raising of food." Jules Pretty, director for the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex
USEFUL SITESOrganic Textiles Q&A - Soil AssociationPAN UK - Wear Organic
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