Organic Cotton

 

1.World Scenario:

Large apparel companies such as Timberland, Nike, PuddleBeach, BabynMore, Green Babies, BellaOnline, Patagonia, Levi , Gaim, and Esprit and several European companies have started to buy "environmentally friendly" cotton -- that is, cotton that is chemical - free.  Cotton farmers use approximately 23 per cent of the world's insecticides and 10 per cent of the world's pesticides to combat pests such as the boll weevil.  U.S. cotton farmers use almost 35 percent of the world total, making them the greatest consumers of cotton pesticides; Indian producers use the second greatest amount, nearly 11 per cent. The cotton plant has to be sprayed 8-10 times before it is harvested. Dyeing the cotton again involves use of toxic synthetic dyes.

2. Indian Market:

In India, Fukuoka's book One Straw Revolution has started a wave of organic farming methods.VOFA or Vidarbha Organic Farmers Association (VOFA) Yavatmal district, Maharashtra, was formed in December 1995 with 132 farmers as members. It is one of the few commercial organic cotton ventures in India .

Maikaal bioRe Ltd, which claims to be the largest organic cotton venture in the world, in Bheelaon, Madhya Pradesh, has over 1,000 farmers involved in organic cotton production. The production of organic cotton started in 1991 as a private initiative of Mrigendra Jalan, Managing Director of the spinning mill, Maikaal Fibres Ltd, and Patrick Hohmann, Managing Director of the Swiss cotton yarn trading company, Remei AG.

3. Ecological-social garments:

A pilot project [1992] with a few farmers on 15 acres was expanded to 1,000+ farmers and 7,600 acres in 80 villages of Khargone district. Remei developed partnerships with manufacturers to produce a whole range of quality, fashionable, ecological-social garments made of Maikaal bioRe's organic cotton. The entire supply chain was integrated in 1995 when Coop, the retailer joined. Coop is Switzerland's second-largest supermarket chain and Europe's market leader in ecological-social products.

According to Hohmann this was the world's largest project on organic cotton, from cultivation to marketing and sale stages. There is active/ aware participation of farmers, spinners, retailers and purchasers. Every year since 1993 at the open house in the ginning factory, hundreds of farmers meet their production partners from abroad, apart from designers, researchers and others involved in this cooperative venture. Research carried out by Swiss agriculturists and the above cotton farmers shows that initially there may be a decline in production for a year, but the long-term organic farming outperforms current high-pesticides and fertilizer inputs farming. Organic cotton gets a 10-20% higher price in the world markets; the higher price translates into just about a few dollars extra in the price of a shirt. The cost-benefits to the world's cotton farmers and people living everywhere in terms of the long-term quality of life /earth/soil is therefore very positive.