Greenpeace - Making Waves: What's up with organic cotton?

Organic cotton farmers in India

Reyes, a scientist working on our sustainable agriculture campaign, explains the latest controversy surrounding organic cotton in India:

Life is hard for the thousands of organic cotton farmers in India, but it's much harder for the millions of genetically engineered (GE) cotton farmers in the country. These farmers in India continue to amount huge debts in order to afford the expensive GE seeds and the chemicals that come with them. And as we travel along the cotton growing regions of Andhra Pradesh, we also find many organic cotton farmers who rely on cheap, locally available resources - instead of GE seeds and chemicals - making a better living with less debt.

The recent news about the GE contamination of organic cotton in India highlights a serious situation that is hard for farmers and complex for anyone else to grasp fully. The genetic contamination could come from many sources: from illegal or ‘fake’ GE seeds to negligence during the processing of the cotton. People in the cotton fields of Andhra Pradesh believe this contamination happens far away from the farm - when middlemen deceptively sell the abundant GE cotton at the premium rates paid for organic cotton. It is impossible to point to one single culprit. And there are thousands of committed organic farmers growing top quality organic cotton in India that are now at risk.

Seed and agrochemicals shop in Andhra Pradesh, India. Indian farm shops sell only GE cotton seeds. © Greenpeace/ Peter Canton

We constantly hear from these organic farmers about the struggle they go through every season to find non-GE cotton seeds. In every village, the local farm shop carries only GE cotton seeds along with “all these modern chemicals you need to buy if you want the GE cotton to work well”. The organic farmers get their seeds directly from a few seed companies that accept their ‘special order’ of non-chemically treated, non-GE seeds.

Something is very wrong when the ‘non-chemical and 'non-GE’ varieties must be ordered specially. Although India is one of the largest exporters of organic cotton in the world, the government is abandoning organic cotton farmers and forcing them to plant GE by not providing conventional seeds. But Indian organic farmers are resisting, and at the same time, making a better living by farming in an ecological and economical way.

International companies buying cotton need to make sure they procure organic cotton from the real Indian organic farmers, thousands of them, who work with the many local organisations committed to ecological farming and rural development in India.

And if you want to help farmers in India you should buy less cheap, low quality clothing and invest in fewer items of better quality, long-lasting, organic cotton clothing. You should also demand that your clothing brands are buying cotton from the real organic farmers in India, as well as paying a fair price for it.

Reyes Tirado is one of our scientists at the Greenpeace Research Laboratories (University of Exeter) currently based in Bangalore, India.

Top Image: Organic cotton farmer Gullapalilli Rajeswari and her husband pick cotton in their field in Kishtapur, Andhra Pradesh, India. They have been growing organic cotton for 4 years while building ecological pest protection with natural methods. They have hardly any pests in their cotton plants now. Their cotton is certified organic and sold directly to a fashion brand in Europe. © Greenpeace/ Peter Canton