The dark side of the cotton industry
Today, cotton is the second most used fibre in the textile industry, accounting for almost a fourth of global textile production. Being a natural fibre, it’s often portrayed as sustainable, but the cotton industry hides a long story of human and environmental exploitation whose abuses continue today.
The cotton industry is a prime example of the negative mutation of the fashion industry where exponential economic growth is made principal. As capitalism has increasingly defined our economic systems and the desire for financial growth remains at the centre of our society, our model of consumerism has evolved to benefit mass corporations, especially within agricultural industries.
THE HISTORY OF THE COTTON INDUSTRY
Cotton has been cultivated sustainability by different societies across the world for millennia. The crop can be traced back to Mesoamerican communities that cultivated it as early as 4500 BCE. Together with linen and hemp, for most of humanity’s history cotton production was approached with measure and an understanding of the balance of the ecosystems where it grew.
Yet due to Britain’s Imperial agenda, by the year 1700 most of the cotton trade had been appropriated and transformed into the infamous model that we see today, and that was built off the back of slaves mostly from the West Indies and Africa.
Currently, cotton is the most widespread and profitable non-food crop in the world. Its production provides income for more than 250 million people worldwide and employs almost 7% of all labour in developing countries[1]. However, the negative effects of this expanding industry can be felt globally. Industrial cotton production is depleting the world’s water resources, with many of the main cotton-producing countries being under high water stress. It uses an immense amount of pesticides and insecticides, and its production relies on the exploitation of vulnerable populations across the world. Let’s deep dive into the dark social and environmental impacts of the industry.
THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF THE COTTON INDUSTRY
The echoes of the mistreatment of humanity, within the industrial cotton industry, can be heard to this day. Due to globalised production and increasing support for the fast fashion industry, most clothes production is outsourced to developing nations. In 2021, 75% of cotton was produced by five countries: India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Brazil[2]. 90% of cotton workers live in low-income countries, with the industry employing 106.2 million children in 2021[3]. Despite the atrocious work conditions and lack of factory regulations in these developing nations, the capitalist agenda is pushing society into a place where the consumer is completely ‘value-oriented’ - while living costs are inflating dramatically, the consumer focus is on the final product and its low price.
Large corporations are reluctant to see the wider picture behind each piece of clothing produced, claiming that enlisting factories with no minimum wage and negligent working conditions is in fact bringing economic growth and opportunity to the developing countries by creating jobs. This argument, however is a fallacy, despite the global cotton industry grossing approximately $21 billion annually, the factories and workers who create the clothing and plough the fields reap very few rewards[4]. Not only are they paid very little, the ecological degradation of the land due to intensive farming, means that local communities and farmers cannot grow their own vegetables and live off their own land, further reducing the quality of life of almost all those involved in the industrial cotton supply chain.
One example of the inequality surrounding fair wages are the 2014 factory strikes in Cambodia where more than 300,000 workers from around Cambodia’s 500 garment and footwear factories, including factories of major brands such as Adidas, Nike and Gap, called for a higher minimum wage. The media was outraged by the violent measures taken to quell the peaceful protests when riot police were called in the small town of Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Where workers were protesting as they were outraged by the small increase in minimum wage which rose from $85 to $95 per month, which was below their demanded target of $160. The riots continued for several months, beginning in late December 2013. The result of the uprising was 4 workers were killed by the police, and a further 23 were sentenced to time in prison, with the ministry in Cambodia agreeing to raise minimum wage to only $100. Whilst America condemned the violent quelling of the riots, the government did not respond to the demands made to enforce legislation that requires major American corporations to outsource their garments to factories with legal minimum wages.
This reluctance to acknowledge the Western perpetuation of the inhumane working conditions in countries across the world stems from the competitive nature of the fast fashion industry. The price pressure between competing fast fashion corporations, means that the Gross Domestic Product is measured only by what is traded, rather than incorporating all aspects of the production process, making the final products cheap by avoiding fair wages for workers. The result being that the people working in the factories are viewed as commodities, rather than living entities with real limits, needs and rights.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE COTTON INDUSTRY
Not only does the industrial cotton industry discount humanity’s boundaries in its production methods, it discounts nature’s boundaries. Whilst companies need to ensure their capital relentlessly grows, nature has limits. The run-off from pesticides used on the cotton plants contaminate what little water is available for the surrounding communities to consume, entering local streams, wetlands and lakes, leading to health issues such as cancers and tumours as well as reduced biodiversity and ecological health.
A multitude of leading Genetically Modifying crop companies such as Monsanto modify their crops to produce their own pesticides, the result of this is that farmers are in constant contact with agrochemicals resulting in health problems. Moreover, the pesticides often stop becoming as effective and pesticides that are not produced by the company who genetically modified the crops do not work. This forces the farmers to use the company’s own specific brand of pesticides, resulting in more capital for the agrochemical companies. This vicious cycle often leads to extreme poverty for farmers as they are reliant on purchasing expensive pesticides to ensure high yields.
In addition, the industrial cotton cultivation severely degrades the quality of the soil it is grown on regardless of whether the crops themselves are genetically modified. The use of intense amounts of pesticides needed to ensure high cotton yield, leads to land exhaustion, whilst water irrigation results in salinisation due to soil being oversaturated with water. Often the use of these pesticides means that only a monocultural field can be cultivated, destroying biodiversity within the ecosystem. Currently, only 19% of cotton is organically produced without chemical fertilisers/pesticides. The cotton industry accounts for 6% of the world’s use of pesticides and 16% of insecticides[5]. Using these chemicals means that the final product is no longer biodegradable and will take centuries to decompose rather than decades.
The depletion of our natural resources is also expedited by the cotton industry, as production uses an immense amount of water; it takes 2,700 litres of water to produce one cotton T-shirt[6]. The result of water irrigation is often drought, take the Aral sea in central Asia as an example - water was used for cotton farming and caused the Aral Sea to shrink to just 10% of its former volume. Currently, global cotton production is weighted at 27 million tonnes annually and is predicted to increase to 29 million tonnes by 2028. Surface and ground waters are often diverted to irrigate cotton fields leading to freshwater loss and contamination due to inefficient water management.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Despite the dark outlook of the industry today, there is hope to shape a better model for cotton production globally. Being one of few natural textile fibres, the cultivation of cotton and global demand for the fibre offers us an immense opportunity to transition to regenerative agriculture models that will recover lost soil fertility and help sequester carbon dioxide, helping turn the agricultural industry from a net emitter into a key driver for carbon capture.
All the solutions involve placing farmers, workers and land at the centre of the production system. Our capitalist system means that consumers hold the power due to our financial potential. In supporting brands that solely use organic fabrics, and that are pioneering regenerative textile production, we can use our capital to shake the system.
There are a multitude of inspirational organisations that are helping communities to move towards a healthier way of growing cotton, such as ‘The Better Cotton Initiative’. They helped farmers reduce pesticide use by 47% and chemical fertilisers by 39% in 2012 and the farmers saw an 11% increase in income compared to farmers still using conventional practices. If the world switched to solely using organic cotton, the global warming potential could be reduced by 46%.
The Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA) goes one step further, empowering farmers to create a better future by adopting regenerative practices that create long-term solutions to some of the biggest issues of our time, including the climate crisis, industrial farming, and fractured rural economies. They have established the Regenerative Organic Certification, which sits on the pillars of soil health, social fairness and animal welfare.
We can only address today’s complex challenges by radically changing the world vision that these stem from. By moving towards a regenerative mindset we can not only prevent more damage from occurring, but to start reversing a lot of the harm done to soil and society in the past centuries. The cotton industry, as harmful as it is today, brings us an opportunity to do so. To learn more about how to implement regenerative strategies into your day-to-day life subscribe to our newsletter, here.
References
[1] Worldwide Fund for Nature.
[4] US department of Agriculture.
[5] Sourcing Journal.
[6] Huffpost.
