The Fabric Of Our Lives

Cotton has been coined “the fabric of our lives” by catchy PR schemes. But is it conducive to life? It is widely known that cotton is the most widely used fiber on the planet, which in turn means it has a large global impact.

Cotton, as a product of global agriculture, has many large scale environmental and social factors contributed to its cultivation. The process of growing cotton is environmentally intense and has a list of negative by-products.  According to The sustainability of cotton report, cotton is considered to be a difficult crop to grow because of its sensitivity to drought, low temperatures and attacks by various insects. These constraints of cotton production require extreme means of irrigation and fertilizer use to ensure its success. It has been estimated that cotton cultivation accounts for 1-6% of the world’s total freshwater withdrawal, according to the report. The most common type of irrigation, because of its low cost, is flood-or-furrow irrigation where water is directed from a river or deeper soil layers to the field. The report claims that due to this inefficient system, the average efficiency of irrigation systems is estimated to be a mere 40%, meaning the remaining 60% never reaches the plant. Inefficient irrigation and over-cultivation leads to salinization of fields which ultimately leads to abandonment of the once arable land. Damns and rivers also are affected by cotton water needs, and in turn ecosystems and fisheries are negatively affected.

The second largest environmental by-product of cotton cultivation is the impact of fertilization and pesticides– it is estimated to consume 11% of the world’s pesticides while it is grown on just 2.4% of the world’s arable land. Poor management of the chemicals is mainly to blame. Genetically modified cotton however, reduces the need for pesticide use, but debate about its non-natural production are basis for exclusion from the organic cotton agriculture producers.

The Cotton, Inc. website remarks fiber production on existing farmlands must triple in order to clothe the projected 9 billion world population by 2050. The website paints a sustainable picture of cotton production and touts its decreased water usage and non expansion of lands, however the report clearly states that 80% of the world’s cotton production is produced under conventional management. The emphasis on more efficiency in cotton production is a step in the right direction, but as a natural resource intensive industry, contributing to an exhaustive by-product of clothing, I cannot say cotton is sustainable. Research on efficiency of cultivation and rights for workers need to aggressively sought after.