ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´

This summer Katharine Hamnett, one of Britain’s best-known fashion designers,
has been selling denim jeans with a difference. It is not the style of the
jeans that is unusual, nor their colour. Rather, the novelty lies in the
material they are made of: organic cotton. The price is £85 – £15
more than a pair of Hamnett’s jeans in the same style but made from nonorganic
denim.

Hamnett is one of the first designers in Europe to investigate the possibilities
of organic cotton, but companies in the US have been working with the fabric
for the past two years, and have ambitious plans for the future. The Gap,
which is both a manufacturer and owner of a large chain of shops in North
America and Europe selling clothes for men and women, has brought out a
range of organic cotton underwear in the US and Canada. Over the next five
years, it plans to introduce organic cotton into its entire range of clothing.
Esprit, the US-based fashion designer, has started selling organic clothing
under its new Ecollection label, and is committed to producing all its T-shirts,
sweatshirts and jeans in organic cotton by 1996.

The enthusiasm of fashion designers for the material has meant that
there is a rising need for what is essentially an extremely rare commodity.
Esprit alone estimates that it will require some 125 000 tonnes by 1996
– an amount way above current production levels. Indeed, until four years
ago, organic cotton was virtually nonexistent. Although the supply has been
quadrupling most years since then, organic cotton accounts for about only
15 000 tonnes of the 18.2 billion tonnes of cotton produced worldwide every
year.

It is easy to see why organic cotton holds such an attraction for the
fashion world. In an industry driven by trends, what better than a material
that embodies the greatest trend of the late 20th century – environmentalism?
But for the cotton industry – one of the biggest agricultural users of
chemicals – ‘going organic’ is no small matter.

In the field, cotton is unusually prone to infestations of weeds, which
thrive in the heavy irrigation cotton needs throughout its growing cycle.
A wide variety of insects also feed on cotton, of which bollworms, notably
pink bollworm (Pectinophera gossypiella) and American bollworm (Helicoverpa
armigera), are the most prevalent and lethal pests. Bollworms are also notoriously
difficult to control: they attack the crop while in their larval stage,
crawling inside the bolls, or seed pods, where neither pesticides nor predators
can reach them. Losses in yield of up to 70 per cent are not uncommon.

To combat the weeds and pests, cotton farmers use huge amounts of agrochemicals:
up to 25 per cent of the world’s total annual production of pesticides
and 10 per cent of all herbicides produced. In some countries, the crop
is sprayed 30 or 40 times a season.

Once harvested, and after the mechanical processes – the ginning, carding,
roving (pulling and twisting), spinning, knitting and weaving – are completed,
the chemical inundation continues. The natural colour of cotton is ecru,
a creamy white, but most people will accept only a limited number of items
of clothing in such a bland colour. Most yarn or fabric is therefore bleached,
using sodium hypochlorite, hydrogen peroxide or chlorine, and then dyed.
Most dyes are derived from oil.

No one can question the need to cut down on this high usage of chemicals
in cotton production. In the US, health authorities have noticed a disturbing
incidence of cancer among cotton farmers handling chemical sprays. In developing
countries, in particular, pesticides have entered the food chain through
drinking water. Everywhere, there has been a worrying amount of chemicals
running off into rivers and the sea.

Free for three years

It would be ideal if producers could abandon chemicals completely, and
such is the philosophy of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture
Movements (IFOAM). Its guidelines, taken up by the European Union and the
various federal authorities with responsibility for organic agriculture
in the US, say that for a crop to be called organic, no chemicals whatsoever
should come into contact with it. Not only that, but the ground on which
the crop is to grow should be free of chemicals for at least three years
prior to planting.

For many farmers, this involves a return to the methods practised before
the Second World War, when most farming was organic. Chicken manure is
used as fertiliser. Weeds are controlled by hoeing, as there is no true
organic treatment on the market. Pest control can often be achieved by releasing
insects that are natural predators of the bollworm. The methods may appear
primitive in an age of convenience farming, but many farmers find encouragement
in history. ‘My grandfather didn’t have pesticides or herbicides,’ says
Claude Shepherd, who farms cotton organically in California’s San Joaquin
Valley. ‘And yet he managed. I figure I ought to be able to manage too.’

Organic methods are not ineffective. Chicken manure and hand cultivation
are well-known alternatives to chemicals and, arguably, their only drawback
is cost. To combat pests, scientists are increasingly advocating biological
controls. For example, trichogrammatids – tiny parasitic wasps – and lacewings
are efficient against most forms of cotton pest, and are being used on
a wide scale in Uzbekistan. Researchers have also discovered how to mimic
the pheromones that the female bollworm uses to lure males. Placing bits
of plastic impregnated with a synthetic pheromone at intervals throughout
a cotton field confuses the males and disrupts mating behaviour in the eight
most important species of bollworm. Although most of the pheromones are
too expensive as yet to be used extensively, farmers in Egypt are using
one effective against the pink bollworm on 140 000 hectares – almost half
of the country’s cotton-growing area.

The expense seems, for some farmers at least, to be paying off. Shepherd,
for example, claims higher yields since he started farming organically on
300 hectares in the San Joaquin Valley four years ago. In the first year
following the switch to organic methods, his yield increased from 900 kilograms
of cotton per hectare to about 1200 kilograms. Since then, he reports having
one season where the yield was 1350 kilograms. These impressive yields
mean considerable financial benefit, with organic cotton fetching at least
40 per cent more than conventionally grown fibre. Last year, Shepherd received
$2.77 per kilogram for his cotton compared with the $1.32 paid to conventional
producers in the San Joaquin Valley.

Sean Swezey, an entomologist with the Agroecology Program at the University
of California at Davis who has been monitoring Shepherd’s crop for the past
two years, is impressed. He compared the organic crop with two conventional
crops grown nearby and found ‘no significant losses in plant performance
in measures such as height growth, boll retention or yield’, he says. ‘We
noticed higher levels of some pests but they didn’t seem to cause increased
damage. There were also some increased labour costs but these were more
than compensated for by the market price.’

Shepherd is a pioneer and, in the manner of pioneers, he talks enthusiastically
about the number of fellow farmers joining him in organic production. You
get the impression that farmers worldwide are rejecting agrochemicals en
masse and are on the brink of a return to older production methods.

In truth, although progress is being made, figures supplied by America’s
National Cotton Council reveal the limited extent of the movement. Even
including land that has not yet been free of chemicals for the full three
years, production of organic cotton in California rose from 2390 hectares
in 1992 to 3270 hectares in 1993. Elsewhere in the States, there are about
6100 hectares put down to organic cotton in Texas (up from 800 hectares
in 1992), 4280 hectares in Arizona, and 385 hectares in Tennessee and Missouri.
In total, production doubled from 5770 tonnes in 1992 to 11 600 tonnes
in 1993 (the total cotton crop in the US is about 2.6 million tonnes).

Bit sceptical

‘At the moment organic cotton represents less than a millionth of world
production,’ says Marck Van Esch of Bo Weevil, a pan-European organisation
set up to promote organic cotton. Organic cotton production is still an
activity for a committed minority and, like most people in the cotton industry,
he finds it difficult to envisage any major growth in the area under organic
cultivation. ‘I believe that it will certainly take some time before you
have even a couple of percentages.’

Ring Carde, professor of entomology at the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst, is similarly pessimistic. ‘Organic cotton is basically grown
in peripheral areas,’ he says. ‘Whether we can ever have huge acreages of
cotton grown without pesticides is something I’m a little bit sceptical
²¹²ú´Ç³Ü³Ù.’

Lawrence McVeigh, a field officer for Britain’s Natural Resources Institute
(NRI) who has been working on cotton-pest pheromones in Egypt and in Pakistan,
explains why. ‘The dangers of infestation are too great,’ he says. ‘It may
be all right if everybody decided to convert to organic production at the
same time – there would just be a few years of reduced yield while your
predator levels grew up. But no farmer in a large cotton growing area is
going to convert to organic production on his own because there would be
too much danger of infestation from neighbouring conventional fields.’

He believes persuading large numbers of farmers to convert to organic
cotton is a well-nigh impossible task. For the past half century, Western
chemical companies have been convincing farmers and governments in developing
countries as to the effectiveness of agrochemicals, and any change to organic
production would require a major change in philosophy. Even persuading governments
to accept different forms of biological control is a considerable undertaking.
It took the NRI, for example, 16 years to persuade the Egyptian government
of the effectiveness of pheromones against the pink bollworm. And British
chemical companies alone are rumoured to have lost £13 million in
sales as a result of the change – a loss which, on a wide scale, could sting
them into intensifying their advertising campaigns.

Inevitably, the factors inhibiting a major shift to organic cotton differ
considerably from region to region. In the US, Australia and other developed
countries, it is the cost of labour that is significant. Weeding and cotton
picking require farmhands, and if the cost of labour is high, this must
be considered a major barrier to future prospects.

In developing countries, where labour is cheaper, organic production
may be more realistic. Cotton is now being produced organically in Turkey,
Paraguay, Argentina, India and Peru. This year Egypt is carrying out trials
on 400 hectares and the US Agency for International Development (USAID)
is looking at the possibility of funding projects to grow cotton organically
in various African countries.

Suited to organic

The cost of labour is not the only factor in how easy it is to ‘go organic’.
Some regions of the world will always be better suited to organic production
than others. The possibility of pest infestation in the large monocultures
of conventionally grown cotton means that areas being targeted at the moment
are on the periphery or away from the main cotton-growing areas. California’s
San Joaquin Valley, for example, is on the northwestern edge of America’s
cotton-producing region and does not have a bollworm problem. In South America,
where cotton is frequently grown in isolated valleys, bollworms are generally
not a major pest.

Each area has to be assessed independently for its suitability for organic
agriculture and local factors may determine whether it is economic to switch
to chemical-free cotton growing. In India, for example, farmers are finding
the cost of agrochemicals prohibitive, and this may sway them towards the
organic route. Egyptian farmers may find organic production attractive because
the American bollworm is not a problem there – unlike neighbouring Israel
and the Sudan. And African countries may be suited to organic production
because their chemical inputs are usually extremely small and they tend
to grow a diverse variety of crops alongside the cotton, which can encourage
insects that prey on the bollworms.

So far, however, production in developing countries is, as with that
in the States, extremely small-scale. India, for example, produced a mere
124.6 tonnes in 1993, Turkey 15.3 tonnes and Argentina an infinitesimal
1.8 tonnes. And comparisons with former yields from conventional cropping
have been far from impressive. ‘Argentina saw a 30 to 35 per cent decrease
in yield in the area which converted to organic,’ says Jens Soth, a project
manager for the Environment Protection Encouragement Agency, a German environmental
consultancy working in the field of organic cotton. ‘In India it was 35
to 40 per cent and Turkey 30 to 40 per cent.’

Teething problems

To the outsider, such losses may appear disastrous, and would seem to
confirm growers’ fears of turning over more land to growing organic cotton.
Optimists, however, point out that organic production is still in its infancy
and is experiencing teething problems. For example, monitoring the crops
for pest outbreaks is a vital component of organic farming; but the methods
take time to learn. In the US, where yields have increased, the farmers
are relatively familiar with biological control and when best to release
beneficial insects. They are also supported by a network of advisers with
a knowledge of organic agriculture. In developing countries, however, organic
farmers have not yet acquired such expertise and rely to a large extent
on the support of Western experts. This is not only expensive but less
efficient: no one is in a better position to monitor a crop than the person
on whose land the crop is grown.

Perhaps more crucial as to whether growers make the switch to organic
cotton, though, will be the fashion world’s ability to sell the idea. Despite
the current difficulties in getting hold of the fabric, designers and manufacturers
believe that once demand has been stimulated, cotton growers will soon
find ways of solving the problems. ‘Our job is to persuade people to wear
organic clothing,’ says Linda Grose who set up Esprit’s Ecollection.

Yet their task could prove a tough one. Most customers are oblivious
to the environmental harm that can result from cotton production; furthermore,
it is by no means certain that the public will buy organic clothing purely
on ecological grounds. ‘People are selfish about what they wear,’ says Janie
Blackburn, director of Natural Fact, a retail outlet selling ‘environmentally
friendly’ clothes in London. ‘It’s not the same as buying organic fruit
and vegetables. The priority is to look good.’

Making organic clothing look as good as conventionally produced clothing
is a challenge. It is not just a question of using organic methods to grow
cotton; natural alternatives also have to be found for the manufacturing
side of the business – the ginning, milling, bleaching and dyeing industries.
‘We are trying to change the very basis of our industry,’ says Grose. ‘Obviously,
no change is going to happen overnight.’

Muddy colours

Natural dyes are muted or, in the words of Nick Vinson, spokesman for
Katharine Hamnett, ‘a bit muddy’. Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore,
to hear that Hamnett herself has failed to interest the wholesalers in her
organic range for the coming winter. ‘Our organic range did well this summer
because ecru was the colour of 1994,’ says Vinson. ‘I cannot visualise us
being able to use so much organic fabric next year when the colours will
be different.’

For many, abandoning chemicals both in the field and in the manufacturing
process has proved too challenging, and some manufacturers are now considering
less strict environmental classifications. For example, the Gap in the US
intends to use chemical dyes on its organically grown range. Novotex, one
of Europe’s largest suppliers of environmental fabrics, markets three different
categories of organic cotton – hand-picked, green and sustainable. And
there has been talk within the EU of introducing ecolabelling for textiles
or an integrated pest management (IPM) standard to indicate that biological
controls have been used on the cotton in conjunction with pesticides. According
to Van Esch of Bo Weevil, an IPM standard would not only be difficult to
administer but would also be meaningless. ‘What would an IPM standard tell
you about a product?’ he says, ‘Nothing! The farmer may have used his spray
once, twice, three times, or even ten times.’

With the wide range of chemicals used in cotton production there seems
endless scope for different standards, and therefore for public confusion.
And while quasi-green labels may satisfy those looking to market a green
product, they are unlikely to satisfy environmentalists. For example, avoiding
bleaches and dyes may be commendable, but it does nothing to improve the
cotton producers’ environment.

Those already involved in growing and promoting organic cotton are committed
to eliminating chemicals from all stages of its production. But they recognise
that organic cotton does not represent an obvious marketing opportunity
– it is, after all, more expensive than conventional cotton and it has the
further disadvantage of being extremely difficult to come by. Yet, by winning
publicity for this clean side of a dirty industry, they hope that they can
bring about change. Because of its purity, they see organic cotton as the
best way to secure this publicity. Van Esch sums up their philosophy. ‘You
could say that organic production is extreme,’ he says, ‘But I believe in
extreme activity. If you really want to get something moving you have to
be extreme.

Jasper Pleydell-Bouverie is a freelance writer.

* * *

COTTONING ON TO COLOUR

In the Europe of the Middle Ages, cotton used to be dipped in urine
and left out in the sun to bleach it, before being coloured with any of
a variety of vegetable dyes. It was a slow and inefficient process. These
days, fabric and yarn manufacturers tend to use chemicals.

Now, however, an Arizonan farmer and former entomologist, Sally Fox,
has come up with a way of eliminating the bleaching and dying processes
by growing naturally coloured cottons in the field. On her farm in Wickenburg,
near Phoenix, she grows yellow, green, brown and red cottons – all the colours
that you would associate with plants and trees. ‘Generally, the colours
I produce are the colours that you’d see in wood,’ she says, ‘whether that
wood is living (the green colours) or dying (the yellows, oranges, straight
browns or grey browns).’

Growing naturally coloured cotton is not a new idea, but rather the
revival of an old one. Cotton of the species Gossypium barbadense and G.
hirsutum grows in many colours besides white but, for the past 150 years,
growers have focused on providing a white crop as this is what the spinning
and dying industries have required. Old varieties of coloured cottons were
also of shorter staple length compared with white cotton, and could not
be machine spun.

Fox developed her trademarked FoxFibre by using classical selection
techniques and cross-breeding with long-staple white varieties, improving
the fibre quality of the coloured cotton so that it could be machine spun.

In 1993, Fox produced about 2000 tonnes of naturally coloured cotton,
grown on about 4000 hectares, and she is currently selling her crop, which
is organically grown, to a large number of manufacturers throughout Europe
and the States. Fieldcrest-Canon, the bed and bath linen manufacturer, and
L. L. Bean, the catalogue retailer of outdoor clothes, are both established
customers.

Though the fibre sells for about three times as much as white cotton,
Fox maintains that manufacturers save an equivalent amount through not using
bleaches and dyes. Prices of finished garments would seem to confirm this.
A sweater manufactured by Pine State Knitwear and marketed by L. L. Bean
sells for $39, and is therefore competitive with conventional cotton sweaters.
Similarly, the towels offered by Fieldcrest are competitively priced.

‘Obviously we will never be able to produce blues or vivid reds,’ says
Andrea Hill, who works with Sally Fox, ‘but there is a lot you can achieve
with brown and green. The idea is that manufacturers will be able to use
our fibre whenever those colours come up.