Cotton crops account for 3% of the world’s crops yet they are at the top of the list for crops using the most chemicals. PANNA (Pesticide Action Network North America) states that, “each year cotton producers around the world use nearly $2.6 billion worth of pesticides -- more than 10% of the world's pesticides and nearly 25% of the world's insecticides”.It is estimated that in the U.S. alone more than 200 million pounds of the pesticide glyphosate (aka RoundUp) were sprayed on fields in 2008.
When these toxic pesticides (this includes herbicides, insecticides, and defoliants) are sprayed over cotton crops they drift into neighboring communities through the air, soil and rainfall. This contaminates lakes and drinking water, kills wildlife and harms the ecosystem.
In 1994 many countries banned Australian beef after animals ate cotton straw laced with the insecticide Helix® (chlorfluazuron). To top it off, a year later newborn calves tested positive for Helix®. It was assumed that the insecticide had passed through the mother’s milk.
Massive pesticide use on crops causes further chemical use. For example, pesticides have notoriously been used to try and remove the common cotton pest the boll weevil. Chemical attempts to remove the pest have killed several beneficial insects and caused other insects to thrive uncontrollably. This ecological imbalance creates more and more pesticide use. Due to massive pesticide straying, crops have been destroyed and farmers have lost huge amounts of money.
On their website PANNA (www.panna.org) writes:
In the 1977/1978 season, at the height of Nicaragua’s cotton boom, cotton was grown on 463,000 hectares. But massive quantities of toxic insecticides were used in the process, leading to a range of new problems. Several previously minor pests became major problems as pesticides eliminated the beneficial insects that held them in check. In addition, insect resistance to pesticides seriously weakened the efficacy of many chemicals. In response, farmers applied so many chemicals that by the late 1980s pesticides accounted for approximately 50% of production costs. Besides making cotton production financially unviable, pesticides also introduced serious health and environmental problems, including farm worker poisonings, fish kills and deep well contamination. By 1990, Nicaragua’s cotton production had declined to 35,000 hectares, less than one fifth its previous level. One UN study estimated that the social and environmental costs of insecticide use in Nicaragua during the cotton boom approached $200 million per year (compared to $141 million in cotton income at the peak of Nicaragua's cotton boom).To take things a step further, make sure that the organic cotton products that you purchase have not been treated during processing with harmful chlorine bleaches, heavy metal dyes and finishers. These may contain carcinogens and other toxins that are harmful to the environment and can persist on fabric indefinitely. Look for companies that comply with The Organic Trade Association and the Global Organic Textile Standard as they have standards for organic cotton production and textile processing.
Cotton has left a severe scar on the once-fertile steppes of Uzbekistan, formerly a Soviet state. Early this century, government planners decided that the Soviet Union should be self-sufficient in cotton and began draining the Aral Sea to irrigate millions of acres for cotton production. Uzbekistan eventually became the source of 90% of the Soviet Union's cotton crop and remains one of the top five cotton producing countries worldwide. But the price of this production has been deadly. Intense pesticide use combined with poor irrigation practices have left fields barren, too contaminated with pesticides and salt to grow anything. Drinking water supplies over vast areas are dangerously polluted. In Kzyl-Orda, the largest city in the Aral region, there has been a frightening increase in childhood illnesses, including blood diseases and birth defects. Pesticide residues in womens breast milk, first measured in 1975, are now detected with increasing frequency. In addition, water diversion has reduced the Aral Sea to 60% its original surface area some 11,000 square miles once under water are now dry and saline, and villages once dependent on fishing are now stranded miles from the shore. Thanks to conventional cotton production, the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth largest body of fresh water, is too saline and polluted with pesticides to support fish.
What can you do to stop the devastating effects that conventional cotton is having on our land? Start purchasing organic cotton. Organic cotton is grown from non-genetically modified seed and without the use of chemical fertilizers, defoliants, pesticides, or herbicides. According to the Sustainable Cotton Project, “while many companies promote their use of organic cotton, it still represents less than one percent of global cotton acreage”. The greater the consumer demand is for organic cotton, the smaller the gap will be between conventional cotton crops and organic cotton crops, which will reduce pesticide use.
There is always a right way and a wrong way to accomplish something. Choosing to purchase organic cotton is the right way. It benefits our Earth, the cotton workers, ourselves and, most importantly, our precious little ones. It’s one more step you can take towards ensuring that they will have a safe world to grow up in. My hope is that it will be a chemical free one.
~ Jillian
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