Cotton History

Cotton has been used to make very fine lightweight cloth in areas with tropical climates for millennia. The earliest reference to cotton is in India. Cotton has been grown in India/Pakistan for more than 6,000 years since the pre-Harappan period, and it is later referred to in the Rig-Veda, composed in 1500 BC. A thousand years later, the famous Greek historian Herodotus wrote about Indian cotton: "There are trees which grow wild there, the fruit of which is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The Indians make their clothes of this tree wool". (Book iii. 106)

During the late mediaeval period, cotton became known as an imported fibre in northern Europe, without any knowledge of what it came from other than that it was a plant; people in the region, familiar only with animal fibres (wool from sheep), could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. John Mandeville, writing in 1350, stated as fact the now-preposterous belief: "There grew there India a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungrie.". This aspect is retained in the name for cotton in many European languages, such as German Baumwolle, which translates as "tree wool".
Today cotton provides half of all textiles. Cotton is grown on about 125,500 square miles worldwide. That is an area roughly the size of New Mexico. In the US cotton, is grown on about 22,000 square miles, roughly the area of Maryland, Vermont and Connecticut, all together. Over 40 billion pounds is grown annually. The business revenue generated, over $50 billion dollars in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of any other field crop.

Cotton, the not so natural fiber

Cotton's effect on the environment has been devastating. Here in the U.S., 53 million pounds of toxic pesticides are applied each year to conventional cotton fields. Cotton uses less than 5% of the Earth's agricultural land, yet it consumes 25% of the chemicals applied.

In growing conventional cotton, it takes 1 pound of chemicals to produce three pounds of cotton - enough to make a pair of jeans and a tee shirt. Not only are huge amounts of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides used on cotton, but defoliants, cousins of Agent Orange, are also applied during the harvesting. And that is only the beginning. In the spinning, weaving, dying, and curing process another arsenal of toxic chemicals are used in conventional cotton. There is a growing percentage of the population that has become so chemically sensitive that wearing conventional cotton immediately brings hives and swelling to their body.

Cotton’s sustainable future

The organic approach starts with a holistic vision of the farm. The farm is seen as a living organism, not a factory, whose care and long term health is in the hands of the farmer. The bottom line is important, but it is not the only measure of success. Under the farmer's stewardship the farm is cultivated to be healthy, sustainable, and beautiful. The tools the organic farmer uses are always sensitive to the inter-relatedness of all aspects of the farm. This includes the use of all organic soil additives, the practices of composting, inter-cropping, and crop rotation. The organic farmer watches his farm and always acts with appropriateness through the diversity of the crops and animals he raises. The organic farmer is at the center of a delicate balance between science and art, economics and life.

Organic cotton is already successfully being grown in 18 countries around the world, including the USA, Turkey, India, Peru, Israel, Egypt and Uganda. The USA has been the initiator in cultivation, though the marketplace here has been limited. Currently about 16,000 acres of organic cotton are being planted in the US. 900 acres of organic cotton were planted in 1990, 3,290 in 1991. It reached a peak in 1995 with 25,000 acres planted. But the market collapsed as supply began to exceed demand. Much of the crop had to be sold at conventional prices and so the farmers lost money. In 1997 planted acres dropped to 9,000. Today, the market is again growing.

Despite this growth, organic cotton currently amounts to about .1% of the acres grown in the USA. We believe that this is only the beginning. With support, the farmers could turn that amount into 20% or 40% or more. The question we must ask is, "If organic cotton can be grown, why isn't organic cotton clothing more readily available?" Ten years ago that same question was asked about organic foods in general. Now organic produce is available in nearly every supermarket from California to Maine.

This article was built from sources found at wikipedia and mindfully.org