Cotton – The Process behind our clothes.
Jeans, T-shirts, Sweaters, Towels, and couch cushions can all typically be made from cotton. What we generally don’t think about is where the products we buy come from around the world, and what processes are included in the manufacturing of the item.
This is a collection of information I have collected from a variety of sources. If cotton is used in a product, it most likely has been through these areas or seen some of the controversies I am addressing.
Interesting facts you may not have known about Cotton
- Cotton dates from at least 7,000 years ago making it one of the world’s oldest known fibres.
- Archaeologists found 5,000 year old cotton fabric at Mohenjo Daro, an ancient town in the Indus River Valley of West Pakistan
- There are 43 species of cotton
- 37 cotton species are from the Old World (Africa, Asia and Australia) and six from the New World (North and South America, Hawaii and the Galapagos Islands)
- Four cotton species have been domesticated around the world:
_Gossypium hirsutum by the Maya civilization in Central America
_Gossypium barbadense by the Inca civilization in South America _Gossypium herbaceum by the Harappan civilization in South Asia
_Gossypium aboreum by the Egyptian civilization in North Africa
- The cotton industry now also uses two types of transgenic cotton: Bollgard II ® (from the naturally occurring soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)) and Roundup Ready® (from the soil bacterium called Agrobacterium tumefaciens)
- 215 pairs of jeans can be made from a 227kg bale of cotton
- Cotton and its by-products are sometimes used in the production of bank notes, margarine, rubber and medical supplies
- One-third of the cottonseed produced from a typical crop is crushed for oil and meal and used in food products or as feed for livestock and poultry
- Naturally coloured cotton varieties in South America have come in shades of red, yellow, beige, chocolate, pink, purple, green, striped like a tiger and even spotted like a leopard!
- In 1996 transgenic cotton varieties were first introduced. By the 20th century, they were widely adopted by the world cotton industry.
- In 2003, the first transgenic cotton varieties to have two independently acting Bt genes are successfully introduced to Australia and the USA.
- Cotton is the world’s thirstiest crop. It takes over six pints of water to produce just one cotton bud and a total of 2,000 liters to produce one cotton t-shirt.
Did you know? Do you want to know?
- Global cotton consumption has been estimated to be responsible for 2.6 per cent of the global water use, however, much of the impact is not felt in the country where the cotton is consumed, but where it has been produced. As a global average, 44 per cent of the water use for cotton growth and processing is not for serving the domestic market but for export.
- As a result it has been estimated that nearly half of the water problems in the world related to cotton growth and processing can be attributed to foreign demand for cotton products.
- Cotton grows on 2.4% of the world’s arable land, yet it is responsible for the release of over US$2 billion of chemical pesticides each year.
- Nearly half of these are considered to be toxic enough to be classified as “hazardous by the World Health Organization.
- Cotton is considered the world's 'dirtiest' crop due to its heavy use of insecticides, the most hazardous pesticide to human and animal health.
- Pesticides are hazardous by design – these are chemicals manufactured with the aim of killing, repelling or inhibiting the growth of living organisms by impairing biological processes essential for the maintenance of life
- These pesticides are hazardous not only to insects but to Children as well. Children are also often the first victims of pesticide poisoning, even if they do not participate in spraying, due to the proximity of their homes to cotton fields or because of the re-use of empty pesticide containers.
- Hazardous pesticides associated with global cotton production also represent a substantial threat to global freshwater resources. Hazardous cotton pesticides are known to contaminate rivers in USA, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Australia, Greece and West Africa
- A few common pesticides used in cotton:
o Aldicarb, a powerful nerve agent, is one of the most toxic pesticides applied to cotton worldwide and the 2nd most used pesticide in global cotton production. Just one drop of aldicarb, absorbed through the skin, is enough to kill an adult.
Endosulfan is widely used in cotton production and is the dominant pesticide in the cotton sector in 19 countries. In a single province of Benin, at least 37 people died from endosulfan poisoning in just one cotton season.
Monocrotophos Despite being withdrawn from the US market in 1989, it is widely used in developing world countries. In 1997, Paraguay’s Ministry of Health and Welfare identified it as being responsible for causing paralysis in children living in cotton growing areas.
Deltamethrin a nerve agent is applied in over half of the cotton producing countries. Medical analysis in a community in a South African village located on the edge of a major cotton production area found traces of deltamethrin in human breast milk.
- Cotton covers 2.5% of the world's cultivated land yet uses 16% of the world's insecticides, more than any other single major crop
Where is cotton grown?
- Over 100 countries grow cotton
- Cotton is grown between latitudes 45°N and 35°S
- An estimated 350 million people are engaged in cotton production either on-farm or in transportation, ginning, baling and storage.
- China, The number one exporter of cotton, in 2007 consumed over 40% of the world’s raw cotton. The US is the second largest exporter and India is the third.
- In 2006/07 China, USA, India, Pakistan, and Brazil accounted for 77 percent of production
- Other significant cotton producers include Uzbekistan, Turkey, Australia and nations from the Middle East and West Africa
- Many developing countries rely on cotton as a major export revenue source and include Burkina Faso, Benin, Uzbekistan, Mali, Tajikistan, Cote D’Ivoire, Kazakhstan, Egypt and Syria.
- In the United States, the major cotton-producing states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, Florida, Kansas and Virginia.
Effects of cotton crops on the world:
Perhaps the most dreadful – if cotton comes from Uzbekistan…
- Instead of using machines, Uzbekistan’s government uses children.
- Every autumn, state officials shut down schools, and send students, together with their teachers, to the cotton fields. Tens of thousands of children, some as young as seven, are forced to undertake weeks of arduous labour for little or no financial reward. Headmasters are issued with cotton quotas and made to ensure that students pick the required daily amount. Children who fail to pick their target of cotton are reportedly punished with detentions and told that their grades will suffer. Those who refuse to take part can face academic expulsion.
- Farmers in Uzbekistan - despite producing a crop worth over US$1billion, those forced to grow cotton receive little of the revenues generated from its sale. Official figures suggest farmers receive around one third of the value of their cotton.
- Not only are there human right violations associated with cotton production in Uzbekistan, there is extensive environmental exploitation catastrophe.
- Once the fourth largest body of water, the Aral Sea has been reduced to just 15 percent of its former volume in order to irrigate the 1.47 million hectares of cotton fields.
- The eradication of this body of water resource has consequently provided the disappearance of the sea’s 24 species of native fish from its waters.
Left: the Aral Sea in 1989. Right: the Aral Sea in 2003.
- From field to end product, cotton passes through a number of distinct production stages with different impacts on water resources.
- Cotton production affects water quality both in the stage of growing and the stage of processing.
o The impact on the first stage depends upon the volumes of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potash and other minor nutrients) and pesticides that leach out of the plant root zone, thus contaminating groundwater and surface water.
o Impact in the processing stage: The average volumes of water use in wet processing (bleaching, dying and printing) and finishing stage are 360m3/ton and 136 m3/ton of cotton textile respectively
Cotton in China
- China is the world’s largest producer of cotton. It is also the world’s largest importer and consumer of cotton.
- Cotton has a crucial position in the national economy and the basic means of livelihood for many Chinese.
- Cotton is hand picked seven to ten times, leaving virtually no fibers unpicked on the plant. If rain inhibits picking, the whole plant is cut, brought under shelter in the family living quarters if necessary, where picking is resumed, and the wood later used for heating purposes.
- The output of cotton yarn and cloth ranks first in the world, with about 40 million spindles and employing more than 8.5 million workers. China accounts for about 7 percent of the world's gross textiles export volume, and ranks fifth among the world's six major textile exporting countries and regions
- However, the speedy development of the textile industry has desperately strained cotton supplies (as well as the increase in implantations of other plant crops in the area)
- A nation, with a population of 1.3 billion, and only 993 million hectares of cultivated land, will find it difficult to increase cotton area significantly in the near future
The Introduction of Biotechnology
- The application of Biotechnology has made a significant contribution in the dramatic reduction in insecticides applied per hectare to Australian cotton crops in the past decade
- The cotton industry uses two types of transgenic cotton: Bollgard II ® (from the naturally occurring soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)) and Roundup Ready® (from the soil bacterium called Agrobacterium tumefaciens)
- Herbicide tolerant cotton can reduce the amount of soil cultivation and herbicide required on cotton crops to control weeds and facilitates healthier soils through less soil disruption and reductions in residual herbicides
- Bollgard II is a second generation genetically modified cotton variety tolerant to the Heliothis caterpillar
- Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) is a naturally occurring soil organism and Bt sprays have been used for over 50 years in agriculture
- Bollgard II require up to 85 per cent less insecticide than conventional cotton.
- About 30 species of insects attack cotton causing serious damage to the crop. Cotton’s main pests are the Heliothis caterpillar, aphids, thrips, mirids and white fly.
- Recent new cotton varieties released contain new features such as improved fibre quality, disease resistance, maturity and regional adaptability
The Bt Cotton Controversy Bacillus thuringiensis Cotton – environmental savings but at a high cost.
- Bt Cotton, which provides resistance to several bollworm species, has been commercialized in a number of countries, including the United States, Australia, China, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, and India.
- There is evidence suggesting that genetically modified cotton and bt cotton cause negative impacts in developing countries, in the small farm sector. Recent disputes center especially around the experience in India where the crop is mostly cultivated by smallholder farmers.
- Three bt cotton hybrids were developed and approved in 2002 – they were MECH 12, MECH 162, and MECH 184.
- Analyses of several years of Indian field trial data demonstrated that Bt technology can significantly reduce pesticide applications and increase effective yields under experimental conditions.
- Anti-biotechnology activists have declared the technology a complete failure.
- In India, on average, Bt cotton is sprayed 2.6 times less often against pests than conventional cotton by spraying was not abandoned completely because the toxin encoded by the Bt gene does not provide resistance to sucking pests, and its protection against certain bollworm species is les than 100 percent.
- In China, insecticide savings through Bt cotton are higher, both in relative and absolute terms, but the overall number of sprays and insecticide amounts are much higher in china than in India.
- Some farmers have complained that Bt cotton is associated with inferior product quality and fetched lower prices in the market.
- Although farmers spend significantly less on chemical insecticides, their savings don’t fully compensate for the higher seed costs. Bt seeds are sold at a price more than three times higher than that of conventional hybrids.
- Since farmers spent so much on Bt seeds, they feel the need to dedicate more time and care into their crops, making total production costs per acre substantially higher.
- Bt cotton has the potential to produce higher yields for farmers, which in turn equates to higher profits.
- An advantage of modern biotechnology is that the Bt gene can be crossbred into many different hybrids, which are well adjusted to diverse local conditions.
- Insecticide use has decreased in the last 10 years with the introduction of Biotechnology (BT); the fastest adapted yet most controversial new technology in the history of agriculture. As of 2007, Bt cotton already commands 34% of total cotton cropland and 45% of world cotton production. In Bt cotton, the insecticide is always present in the plant rather than applied in periodic spraying sessions which will lead to rapid rates of pest immunities and possibly produce superpests
Bt Cotton and India – the Suicide sector.
- Rural farmers lack the necessary safety equipment, protective clothing, and training for handling hazardous pesticides. In India, one in ten pesticide applications results in three or more reported health symptoms related to pesticide exposure
- US cotton subsidies artificially lower cotton prices while production costs for Biotech (Bt) seeds and pesticides are rising, causing financial stress in the rest of the world's cotton-producing areas. India's once prestigious cotton belt is now referred to as the "suicide belt" due to farmers unable to accept growing debts. Since 2003, the suicide rate has averaged one every eight hours in Vidarba, India
