A New Horizon | Emma Dickinson
Cotton and Soil Health: the Good, the Bad, the Fluffy
by: Olive Lambert
“Cotton is king,” declared Senator James Henry Hammond in 1858, a statement that still holds up today in a world hungry for cotton. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the statistics on cotton consumption in the United States showed that 581,000 pounds of extra long staple cotton were consumed in January 2024, up 25% from December 2023 and up 46% from January 2023. The total consumption of man-made fiber was 16 million pounds in January 2024, up 11% from December 2023 (USDA, 2024).
The United States began its obsession with cotton following the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. As textile mills in England demanded more cotton, white farmers in the southern United States subsequently demanded more land to grow cotton and turn a profit. Westward expansion provided their demanded land for cotton farms, the end result being higher numbers of slaves imported in to run those farms. This marked the beginning of cotton’s crimes against people and the environment. According to Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott, “By 1820, the United States was more than growing 30 times as much cotton as it had when Whitney invented the gin, making it the world’s leading supplier” (Elliott, n.d.). This level of cotton production and dependence led to the crop becoming an issue in the modern world, with swaths of land devoted to growing cotton.
Cotton today is used in a wide range of products, its versatility blinding many consumers to the true dangers of this innocent-seeming crop: “Cotton supplies over 70% of this market with jeans, shirts, and underwear … In home furnishings, cotton’s uses range from bedspreads to window shades … towels and washcloths … [and] sheets and pillowcases” (Cotton, n.d.). Cottonseed is produced along with the cotton fiber, about 6.5 billion tons annually, and this cottonseed is used to feed livestock as well as make cottonseed oils for food products like salad dressing, cooking oils, and margarine. The majority of first world luxuries have their roots in the cotton industry.
Most may feel okay with this dependence on cotton; the crop is marketed as a natural product which leads many consumers to believe it is environmentally friendly. Cotton farming, though, is harmful to the soil and local water sources, mostly due to it being monocultural. Monoculture crops are left more vulnerable to insects, and the cotton industry alone uses “about 10 percent of all pesticides…[and] 10 percent of the world’s herbicides too” which totals “about a pound of chemicals…for five pounds of cotton” (Farrell, 2010). Each step of processing cotton into wearable clothing uses fossil fuels, including the dyeing of cotton which uses chemicals derived from petroleum.
Cotton presents detrimental social issues as well, which James Farrell discusses extensively in “The Nature of Clothing.” He attributes America’s overconsumption of clothing to a constant need for new items to wear for only a few occasions. One example noted how athletic clothing is marketed specifically for outdoor activities, making the public believe they cannot go outside to be with nature without the proper gear, which lends itself to the overconsumption of unnecessary clothing items.
Farrell also brings up America’s logo-centric mentality, where the brands and logos on the clothing matter to Americans more than a need for new clothes. These logos can be brand names that identify one as being of a higher class, sports or franchise logos, or affiliation logos to a specific group, such as a college. Farrell says, “A commercial emblem for a college … such [a] symbol [carries] no real sense of identification with nature, no sense of interdependence, no sense of cosmic relation” (Farrell, 2010). Clothing, especially in a logo-centric society, has begun isolating people even more from the environment their clothing comes from.
So how is cotton specifically one of the worst crops for the environment? Cotton requires large amounts of water to be grown: 2,700 liters to make only one cotton t-shirt. The Aral Sea alone has lost 85% of its volume due to decades of cotton irrigation, destroying a local water source and habitat. The increasing demand worldwide for cotton has led to other habitats such as forests being turned into agricultural land for cotton farming and also resulting in fewer trees for carbon capture—cotton production alone releases 220 million tons of carbon a year. Cotton by itself should also be fully biodegradable, but it is often dyed, treated with chemicals, and mixed with synthetic materials, losing its biodegradable properties and becoming toxic to the soil and any nearby water systems (Nizzoli, 2020).
Cotton also presents a humanitarian issue. The crop and its resulting industries were built by slavery and continue to be run by enslaved individuals. Production of this cash crop has led to an agreement called the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is “a neoliberal trade agreement that limits labor rights, human rights, and environmental protections in the interest of free trade” (Farrell, 2010). Other disturbing statistics on slavery and cotton include that “a fifth of all global cotton supply is grown in the Uyghur region in China,” which is a region notorious for human rights violations, including “over one million workers [being] detained and forced to work” (Nizzoli, 2020). Child labor is often involved in 71% of the agriculture industry as well, and disenfranchised countries with little other economic options bear the brunt of this, especially for cotton production (Nizzoli, 2020).
Cotton production and disposal negatively affect the health of soil as well. Herbicides and pesticides used in the growing of cotton wash away into both soil and water supplies, and pesticides kill microorganisms in the soil which are meant to aid in the soil’s vitality. When cotton is disposed of and degrades, the chemicals and dyes used in production break down into the soil. Farmers plowing and tilling their fields constantly to prevent weeds leads to soil erosion and also breaks down organic matter within the soil. Irrigation systems used to water cotton can lead to the salinization of the soil, which allows for the formation of dead lands and forces the agriculture industry to take up new lands for cotton production and other crops (Nizzoli, 2020).
What can one do to try and improve the cotton industry? On a personal level, one should reduce consumption or buy compostable clothing. Buying recycled cotton materials, mending clothing already owned, or thrifting clothing when necessary all reduce consumption of new cotton products. Before purchasing clothing, ask yourself if you actually need and will use the article you are buying.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator states, “Soil health practices can substantially increase the amount of carbon sequestered in cropland soils,” so therefore the public should also advocate for better soil health practices in the cotton industry, and in the agriculture industry as a whole (Creech, 2018). For example, planting “cover crops” in fields provides the soil with nutrients. Cover crops suppress weed growth which will lead to less fertilizer use and increase infiltration of water into the soil, reducing runoff and soil erosion as well as promoting less water use through irrigation. (Creech, 2018). Soil conservation tactics such as reducing, tilling, or practicing conservation tillage, which is “the practice of covering the soil in crop residue year round … to reduce soil movement,” can also prevent soil erosion and allow for more fertilizing of the fresh soil (Cotton, n.d.). In terms of decomposition, natural and water-based dyes would not only reduce the use of harmful chemicals in regular dyes, but they also will not impact the soil when they degrade.
Soil is the source of all life, food, and materials, but the current cotton system is detrimental for the health of soil, and therefore is detrimental to the life of the entire ecosphere. The cotton industry, clothing overconsumption, and agriculture practices must change in order to preserve the life of everything under the ecosphere.
References
Cotton: From Field to Fabric, Cotton Counts,
Creech, Elizabeth. “Soil Health: 4 Findings All Cotton Producers Need to Know.” Farmers.Gov,
United States Department of Agriculture, 8 May 2018, http://www.farmers.gov/blog/soil-health-4-findings-all-cotton-producers-need-know.
Elliott, Kimberly Kutz. “The Cotton Kingdom .” Khan Academy, Khan Academy,
Farrell, James J. “The Nature of Clothes.” The Nature of College, Milkweed Editions, 2010, pp.
51–66.
Nizzoli, Giada. “Is Cotton Bad for the Environment? The No-Fluff Truth!” Sustainable Fashion
Blog | Project Cece, 2020, http://www.projectcece.com/blog/445/is-cotton-bad-for-the-environment-the-no-fluff-truth/.
USDA. Cotton System Consumption and Stocks, Cornell University, 1 Mar. 2024,
downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/ng451h506/3b592x969/1c18g3621/cact0324.pdf.