Cotton industry
Cottons is the most important fibre used in the textile industry and grown on an industrial scale to over 90 per cent. This type of farming involves cultivation in mono cultures, artificial irrigation and extensive use of pesticides and fertilisers. This kind of cultivation causes a variety of grave ecological, social and economic problems causing serious harm to both men and the environment. The majority of these issues can be attributed to enormous water consumption, the use of farming chemicals and the economic imbalance present on the global cotton market.
Water consumption
What the cotton plant needs to grow is water. On average, an amount of 8,000 litres, which equals the capacity of approximately 50 bath tubs, is necessary to produce one kilogram of raw cotton. For the purpose of regulating the water quantity they need to add in order to maximum their yield, the cotton industry prefers cultivating cotton in dry desert areas with the help of artificial irrigation. As a consequence, 75 per cent of the cotton cultivated world-wide is grown on irrigated fields. By comparison: All of the world’s households combined consume less water than is necessary to irrigate the total of cotton fields cultivated by the cotton industry.
For the purpose of supplying these vast plantations, the water is extracted from rivers or pumped up through deep bore holes drilled into the ground. Such a large-scale extraction of water from the ecosystem will eventually overload bodies of ground and surface water. The ramifications are barren soil, declining vegetation, and the loss of habitable land for humans and animals. The last century witnessed the disappearance of half of the earth’s wetlands. The excess consumption of groundwater by the farming industry is, therefore, a serious threat to our planet’s ecosystem.
Extensive irrigation results in the salinisation of our soils. Regular watering on a large scale will wash out salts from the deeper layers of the earth which will then accumulate in the top layers. If containing excess salt concentrations, the soil eventually become barren and useless for agricultural purposes.
Farming chemicals
Industrial cotton cultivation seeks to plant so-called cultivated cotton species which have a particularly high yield. This bred species are much more susceptible to contract diseases than their conspecifics growing naturally. At the same time, monocultural cultivation promotes the spreading of diseases, fungi and pests.
For this reason, seeds and plants are treated extensively with plant protecting agents,
so-called pesticides, to prevent substantial damage. Pesticides are artificial substances that protect plants from pests, prevent lack of nutrients or increase the plants’ resistance to diseases. The global cotton industry is one of the markets for pesticides. Its annual consumption ranges from 150,000 to 250,000 tonnes. By comparison: Approximately 30-35 tonnes of pesticides are spread across all fields farmed in Germany.
These highly toxic farming chemicals pose great danger to the workers and the population in the vicinity of these fields. Cotton cultivation is responsible for approx. 120,000 poisoning cases per year, 2,300 of which end in fatalities. The substances have a harmful effect on the reproductive and the immune system, organ development, and the neurological functions of human beings. Possible damage may result in sex transformations, disfigurations, cancer, and behavioural abnormality. With their share of all fatal poisoning cases amounting to 50 to 75 per cent, developing countries are hit particularly hard. The pesticides are often put out by hand. Worse yet, many pesticide manufacturers sell products in developing countries which contain active ingredients that are banned in Europe due to their severely harmful effect on a person’s health and the environment. As a consequence, the ratio of pesticide poisoning cases occurring in industrial countries versus those occurring in developing countries is 1 to 13.
What is more, pesticides are also responsible for significant flora depletion and disturbing the ecological balance. Volatile pesticides can travel along air paths and cover long distances. For this reason, they are considered the cause for a reduction in the number of fish, amphibians, and birds and are found to have a negative effect on the marine fauna of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
They also have an immediate impact on the consumer. The use of pesticides causes residual contamination of the cotton, which averages 250 ng per kilogram as found by current studies.
At the same time, cotton is the agricultural product that is most frequently subjected to synthetic fertilisers as the mono-cultural cultivation of large areas wears down the soil quickly. Long-term use of these fertilisers causes soils to become salinated. If entering the ground and surface waters, fertilisers can lead to the eutrophication of the eco system. This phenomenon can also be observed in this country when swimming lakes “turn over” in the summer, i. e. become oversaturated by an excess increase in nutrients caused by the fertilizers spread onto the neighbouring fields, causing the flora and fauna to perish.
Social and economic problems
Industrial cotton production increasingly causes developing countries to experience severe social and economic problems.
Growing agricultural products for export such as cotton competes with the production of food needed to sustain the population in heavily indebted developing countries. For example, so-called »cash crops« occupy 5-20 per cent of the farm land in each country on the African continent, causing famine to the African people while cotton is grown on their fields to satisfy the demand of the Western textile market.
The extensive use of farming chemicals causes cotton farmers to become permanently dependent on the fertiliser and pesticide industry. This has negative economic ramifications for all cotton producers, but especially for those operating in developing countries. The expenses caused by these substances to farmers in Mexico, Mail and Tanzania already amount to 50-60 per cent of their overall production costs, continually reducing the revenue of these farmers. At the same time, the price of cotton has dropped by more than 50 per cent over the course of the last 20 years. The main cause of this decline becomes evident if you look at the subsidising polices applied by the industrial nations. The subsidies cotton producers receive in the EU and the USA have led to overproduction around the world and caused world market prices to slump. Cotton is a major source of income and foreign currency for many countries in the developing world. For this reason, the economic problems with which these financially weak countries are faced are exacerbated by the ongoing drop in raw material prices.
By comparison: While 25,000 cotton producers in the United States receive approximately 50 per cent of all cotton subsidies paid world-wide, 15 to 20 million people in Western Africa can barely survive on the revenue generated by growing cotton.
For more information go to:
>> CCC – Clean Cloth Campaign
>> PAN – Pesticide Action Network
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