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Is Cotton Really Tainted?

• By  Terry Townsend
• April 16, 2024

Yet another report has been released that demonises the cotton industry. The report by Earthsight is a new Aral Sea. Cotton is blamed for environmental destruction associated with national development plans, and the clear message to retailers is that they should source polyester.

The Earthsight report contains factual errors and distortions related to water and pesticide use in cotton production. It makes you wonder what other errors they might be making.

Earthsight claims that cotton is a notoriously thirst crop. Cotton uses 2.3% of global crop land, but less than 2% of all water used for irrigation worldwide is used on cotton.

Cotton in Bahia requires 3,500 litres of water per kg of lint, not 10,000 litres as the report claims. Assuming four t-shirts per kg of cotton lint, total water use per t-shirt would be 875 litres, of which irrigation water would be less than 70 litres, not 2,700 litres. Earthsight is in error by a factor of 38.

Earthsight says that 600 million litres of pesticide are dumped on the Cerrado each year, and the implication is that this is related to cotton. Brazilian farmers applied 34,500 tonnes of pesticides on cotton in 2021. That includes herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, nematicides and growth regulators, including biological pesticides. Assuming averages apply, pesticide use on cotton in 2021 would have been around 6% of the 600 million litres cited by Earthsight.

Cotton is not even the major driver of environmental change in the Cerrado.

Most of the large-scale human modification in the cerrado took place within the last 50 years. With the construction of the new capital of Brazil (Brasília), several highways were built, opening up the region to a large process of development. Managed pastures and large-scale plantations of soybeans, corn, and irrigated rice were established.

A more fundamental issue with Earthsight, and with discussions of pesticide use in general, is that there is a presumption that pesticides are bad, and thus more use is worse. Farmers in Brazil are among the most sophisticated in the world. Farm workers for the large producers are not suffering from pesticide poisoning or adverse health impacts, because they use proper equipment and application methods. Resistance to pesticides is not developing in Brazil, there is no evidence of harm to non-target species, and land is not being poisoned.

Another shortcoming of the report is a lack of perspective on the implications of reduced production in Brazil, as Earthsight apparently wants. We saw what happened to food prices when Russia invaded Ukraine, disrupting supplies of wheat and corn. Brazilian farmers feed and clothe the world, and nowhere is this perspective mentioned.

The report is entitled, `Fashion Crimes’. It is not entitled Brazilian Crimes, or Better Cotton Crimes, or Agribusiness Crimes, or Retailer Crimes. No one ever writes about Polyester Crimes or the sourcing issues associated with oil extraction and polymer production.

While describing cotton, emotive language such as ‘Dirty Brazilian Cotton’, ‘tainted cotton’, ‘notoriously thirsty crop’, ‘vast cotton and soy monocultures’, ‘extremely high carbon footprint’, ‘flawed ethical supply chain’ are becoming only too common. Instead, the narrative needs to be objective with the aim of informing.

Maybe the targets of the report are Better Cotton, Brazilian agribusiness, and large retailers, and maybe Earthsight does not mean to blame cotton itself. Nevertheless, the world cotton industry is smeared by the blanket allegations about water and pesticide use. Earthsight is undermining the entire cotton industry and the livelihoods of tens of millions.

While describing cotton, emotive language such as ‘Dirty Brazilian Cotton’, ‘tainted cotton’, ‘notoriously thirsty crop’, ‘vast cotton and soy monocultures’, ‘extremely high carbon footprint’, ‘flawed ethical supply chain’ are becoming only too common. Instead, the narrative needs to be objective with the aim of informing.