Dirty History of Cotton

White Gold harming the Blue Planet

Everybody loves cotton. It feels nice and soft and cosy. It can be cleaned easily. It can be dyed in beautiful colours.  We sleep in it, we wash and dry with it, we wear it and we use it to make our homes pretty and comfortable. This wonderfully versatile material has been discovered already in prehistoric times, and we know that it has been cultivated in Mexico as early as 8,000 years ago. Throughout history many early civilisations all over the world, like the Egyptians, the Chinese and Peruvian Indians fancied cotton fashion.

But the history of this fluffy white crop is stained with some unpleasantly dark spots. For one, the extensive cultivation of cotton was a driving force behind the north American slave trade in the 19th century. Contemporaneously, Imperial England forced India to export raw cotton and re-import cotton clothing, thus supporting the industry on the British Isles and pushing Indian manufacturers into poverty.

The controversy around cotton continues to this day. Poverty and child labour are still issues connected to the white gold. What is more, it also becomes increasingly clear that the intensive cultivation of cotton poses enormous environmental hazards


The “Dirty Crop”

Cotton is a thirsty plant with very high water consumption - a huge problem in times of shortening water supplies. The agricultural production of raw cotton for something as small as a single T-shirt already consumes about 2,400 litres of water. In hot and arid areas where cotton is mainly produced, this is usually sourced from the natural aquatic cycle, leading to critical shortages elsewhere.

The control of various vermin is essential in industrial agriculture. Cotton is sometimes referred to as „The world's dirtiest crop“cotton covers 2.5% of the worlds cultivated land, yet uses 16% of the world's pesticides and insecticides, more than any other single major crop. These chemicals are extremely hazardous, poison the ground water and eventually end up in the food chain, especially as the cotton seed hull is often sold as animal feed.

To grow the demanding crop industrially on relatively poor soil, fertilizers need to be applied. Nitrogen synthetic fertilizers are a major contributor to increased N2O emissions, which are 300 times more potent than CO2 as greenhouse gas. To grow 1kg of raw cotton, around 300 grams of fertilizer may be necessary on the depleted soil of a cotton monoculture.

Cotton is grown in many different ways all over the world, and while developed countries like Australia and the USA are doing a lot of research and finding new methods to grow this important crop in a less water intensive and polluting way, they only contribute 25% of the annual harvest. The remaining 75% is produced in less developed countries, often regardless of the environmental impact entailed by the use of chemicals and the changing water cycle.

Small farmers and their families all around the world rely on cotton. A large number of cotton workers suffer from the consequences of their trade. Many are simply not aware of the risks involved in handling hazardous substances such as fertilisers and pesticides, while others lack the necessary training and safety equipment.


Two Cotton Catastrophies

China: In China the agriculture and processing of cotton is alleged to have led to huge water pollution problems and soaring cancer rates among the people living along the filthy water ways. The country is the world's largest producer of cotton - big business for the economy, but a huge loss for nature and people. It is thought that huge environmental damage is done by the largely uncontrolled use of heavy metals, starch and bleaches in the process of dying and fabric production. Waste management and recycling of these chemicals is rarely applied - quite often pipelines dump industrial run-off either underground or directly into rivers and lakes. To their credit rules and regulations have been put in place by the government, but it is thought that local economic interests often stand in the way of their strict enforcement.

Uzbekistan:  The Aral Sea, formerly one of the largest lakes in the world, has now shrunk to 10% of its erstwhile size thanks to the intensive cultivation of cotton. The Soviet Union had enforced cotton production in the area in the 1930s and since then the two rivers Syr Darya and the Amu Darya bringing water into the once huge lake are channelled onto cotton fields to cater for the enormous thirst of the crop. Ironically most of the water does not even get far enough to irrigate the fields – the canals are not water proof and 75% of the water just gets lost through leaks along the way. It is widely believed that the Aral Sea has been reduced to a poisonous puddle. As a result of the continuing water diversion and evaporation, the shrinking Aral divided into two separate lakes and its salinity increased from 10 grams per litre to 45 – the average seawater salinity is 33 g/litre. The once thriving fishing industry has been destroyed along with the fish and most of the flora and fauna. Salt pans and contaminated run-off lakes have appeared, and winters have become harsher and longer, summers hotter and shorter. Of the region's 73 species of birds, 70 of mammals and 24 of fish, most have either perished or moved on. The area is now constantly subject to toxic dust storms and desertification, the 2.5 million people of the area are suffering 9 times the world average rate for throat cancer, and the infant and maternity mortality is the highest in all of the former Soviet Union's republics. Respiratory complications, tuberculosis and eye diseases are also rising alarmingly. Uzbekistan today is still one of the largest cotton exporting countries.

Cotton Future

But fortunately change is in the air. In India an increasing amount of farmers are going organic. The formerly rich and prosperous cotton industry needs to seek a way out of poverty: Crushed by the cheap market prize, kept low by the US to strengthen their own cotton production, India's once prestigious cotton belt is now referred to as the "suicide belt", because bankrupt  farmers unable to handle growing debts opt for suicide. Since 2003, the suicide rate has averaged one every eight hours in Vidarba. But with the growing organic markets new hopes are rising. Helped by a number of new organizations like “Pants for Poverty“ and “Zameen Organic”, the farmers in the poorest regions of India are now learning how to go back to the days before intensive farming, pesticides and chemical fertilizers and are growing, yes, organic cotton in their traditional way. According to a recent survey by Greenpeace, the cultivation of organic cotton even leads to increasing incomes among those farmers that make the transition to organic cotton, mainly because of the reduced expenditure on pesticides.  

Author Stephanie Borst