Sustainable Cotton Project Tour

Lucy & Mei.com joined over 100 representatives from major textile and apparel retail companies from across the United States on a tour of California's Central Valley Cotton Farms. The Tour was facilitated by the Sustainable Cotton Project staff members and local farmers who are involved in the project. The Sustainable Cotton Project is a program dedicated to assist conventional farmers in transitioning to more biological farming practices. SCP's mission is to reduce toxicity in cotton cultivation and support family farmers, seeking to maintain viable, livable, rural communities. The growers involved in the project are taking action to change the way cotton is farmed and marketed, producing high-quality cotton by reducing their usage of the most toxic pesticides and herbicides.

One of the sustainable methods farmers are using to reduce the use of toxic pesticides is to plant perennial hedgerows surrounding the farm fields. Hedgerows are rows of trees, shrubs, perennial grasses that provide a nesting area for beneficial insects and help protect the land from soil erosion.

This hedgerow has rosemary, oaks, pines, coffee berry, yarrow, and coyote bush. It is planted along the cotton fields of Windfall Farms of the Central Valley. The farmers shared with us how tenuous farming can be, last year they lost an entire field of organic cotton to a white fly infestation. Cotton farmers in the California have struggled with transitioning to organic farming due to many factors including, draught, lower yield per acre, significant global economic hardship during the last three years, pest management difficulties, and lack of market support for the cost of organic cotton.

We had time to explore the Pima cotton fields which were ready to be harvested. The group enjoyed picking the cotton and walking through the fields.

The growers at Windfall Farms have grown a few acres of colored cotton of brown and green which produced beautiful color variations. Growing colored cotton is being explored as a replacement for conventional methods which use bleaching and dying with toxic chemicals.

When the cotton fields are ready to be harvested, large tractors pull the locks of cotton from the plant before loading them into modules for transport (see modules below).

The modules are transported to the gin where the seeds are separated from the cotton fiber. The seeds are used in three ways: feed for livestock, cottonseed oil (used in potato chips and other snack foods), and also for planting next year's harvest.

As a result of the Sustainable Cotton Project, there has been a reduction in the use of chlorpyrifos (SCP growers use up to 76% less), participating farmers seek to eliminate the use of 13 of the most harmful chemicals used in conventional cotton farming, and growers have produced more than 1 million pounds of SCP's trademarked "Cleaner Cotton" over the past 6 years.

For more information, please visit: http://www.sustainablecotton.org

Submitted by Lucyandmei.com