/IPS ENVIRONMENT BULLETIN/ TECHNOLOGY: Race to Produce Toxic-Free Cotton Warms Up

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 29 1997 (IPS) - Organic farmers in the United States are battling multinational seed and drug companies in the race to win emerging markets for ‘environmentally friendly’ cotton that requires little or no pesticides.

About half of all toxic pesticides sprayed on agricultural crops in the Third World are aimed at killing cotton pests, and about half of the global consumption of pesticides is used for the crop, making it one of the most environmentally unfriendly crops in the world, according to the International Ecological Agricultural Services, based in Britain.

Partly to change this image, major clothing multinationals like the Gap, Levi-Strauss, Nike, and Patagonia have expressed growing interest in buying pesticide-free cotton for use in products from shoes to shirts and jeans.

“Our goal is to integrate organic cotton into our production as a good business decision,” Katie McCarthy recently told the Organic Cotton Monitor, a publication of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

This bid for pesticide-free cotton has fuelled a slow but sure increase in production and sales of organic cotton since it was first introduced into the United States about a decade ago.

But there are also efforts to get around the pesticide problem.

One year ago, farmers around the United States planted more than 728,000 hectares of Bollgard, a genetically engineered cotton plant designed by the multinational drug company Monsanto that also supposedly reduces the need for pesticides.

But both the organic cotton and the Bollgard ran into problems in 1996. Organic farmers saw a sharp drop in market demand for their product last year, while many of the farmers who used the genetically modified seeds were forced to return to conventional spraying methods when they were hit by an unusually high infestation of bollworm pests.

To tackle such pests, U.S. farmers have sprayed massive quantities of chemicals from the air, posig a health threat to people as well as to livestock living near the cotton fields. The cost of these chemicals is also high — as much as 250 dollars a hectare.

The pesticides include brands like ‘Roundup’ or ‘Rodeo,’ a Monsanto product whose chemical name is glyphosate. This chemical is known to cause eye and skin irritation, cardiac depression, gastrointestinal pains, vomiting, and excess fluid accumulation in the lungs.

Organic farmers avoid these problems partly by switching from chemical fertilisers that attract certain insects to biofertilisers, using compost, oil cakes, and liquid fertilisers. The use of these alternative chemicals, however, increases the population of natural pests.

Organic farmers have also effectively reduced the natural pest population by using botanical pesticides, insect repellents, and by trapping some pests through the use of sexual pheronomes.

In the meantime, global production of organic cotton from countries including India, Peru, and Uganda rose from 6,000 tonnes in 1993 to almost 10,000 tonnes in 1995, although there was a decline in 1996.

This “green technology” has also resulted in major cost savings. Indian farmers, for example, have reported 42 percent lower pesticide costs. This was omewhat offset by slightly lower yields, but overall, the farmers made about six percent more in income than the modern farmers.

Other projects like the Lango Organic project in Uganda and the Pakuchko Pax in Peru, have been given initial financial and technical support from aid agencies, including the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the Agro-Eco Consultancy in the Netherlands.

Bollgard, on the other hand, is one of the latest in a series of genetically engineered crops to be supported and promoted in the United States by multinational agricultural and drug companies.

The trend began with the Calgene Flavr-Savr tomato about two years ago. Since then, companies have introduced new laboratory- designed varieties of soybeans, corn, and potatoes. Wheat is next in line.

The Monsanto cotton, which is sold commercially by the multinational company Delta and Pine Land, produces its own “natural” pesticide — the bacteria bacillus thuringiensis — in every fibre of the plant. This means the pesticide is not washed off in the rains like the conventional agro-chemicals which are externally applied.

Bollgard is now being promoted heavily abroad. The Chinese province of Hebei has just announced plans to plant roughly 202,000 hectares of Monsanto-designed cotton in early 1998. The announcement follows an agreement with Delta and Pine Land to set up a new joint venture called Hebei Ji Dai cotton seed technology.

But a number of U.S. farmers are already unhappy with Bollgard. More than a dozen cotton growers recently filed a class-action suit against Monsanto, Delta Pine, and other companies, alleging that the companies were misrepresenting the success of last summer’s crop.

“I’ve met farmers in Louisiana, farmers in central Mississippi who won’t be planting this stuff again,” says Philip Maxwell, the lawyer for the plaintiffs. “I was in one field where the cotton had grown 9 feet (2.7 metres) high, straight up like a bean stalk with no fruit. It was crazy-looking. Freak cotton.”

Indeed, many environmental groups do not consider this new type of cotton to be truly “green” because they say that the genetically modified crops have the potential to introduce new environmental hazards.

Jane Rissler of the Union of Concerned Scientists says that the pests could quickly evolve a resistance to the genetically modified plant. There is also the worry that the new genes may have some unexpected side effects or cause allergies in human beings.

Rissler’s organisation, which has testified regularly at government hearings on the dangers of genetically engineered crops, plans to hammer home the failures of Bollgard at an upcoming hearing organised by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Another regular criticism from environmentalists of the new “green cotton” is that reducing pesticides has not solved the other environmental problems caused by modern cotton production.

For example, cotton plantations are heavy water users. From eastern Europe o the United States and Sudan, demands from cotton farmers, have caused severe depletion of water supplies.

“Even organic cotton entails practices that pollute: mechanical pickers guzzle gas, spray drifts from other fields; we use harmful dyes, and we ship goods too many times at too many stages,” says the Globe, a publication of the Patagonia clothing company herein California.