The Importance of Supporting Organic Cotton Farming by Jason Westfall, AEOE Southern Newsletter Editor

You may have noticed that at all conferences where cotton products are sold, AEOE chooses products that were organically produced. As a bonus, their purchase may even contribute to social change as well. You may also be wondering why don't they just buy the standard Hanes Beefy-T? They're always real nice, right? Cotton uses approximately 25 percent of the world's insecticides and more than 10 percent of the pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides and defoliants). In the US in 2000, 84 million pounds of pesticides were sprayed on the 14.4 million acres of conventional cotton grown in the country, ranking cotton second behind corn in total amount of pesticides sprayed. The Environmental Protection Agency considers seven of the top 15 pesticides used on cotton in 2000 in the United States as "possible," likely," "probable," or "known" human carcinogens.

Cotton is the most heavily sprayed crop in the world - one pound of cotton has been sprayed with an average of 1 3/4 pounds of pesticide! Did you know that because cotton depletes the soil so extremely, that nitrogen fixing plants such as soybeans and peanuts are used to help recondition the soil and to fix nitrogen? You can probably guess what happens to these nitrogen fixers as they grow on the plot previously planted with the chemical laden cotton. they end up in your food and in your watershed! As a matter of fact, non-organic peanuts are among the highest in pesticide residuals. Make sure you look for organic peanut butter, as well as organic soybeans, whenever possible.

AEOE pledges to, when available, always purchase organic cotton for conference tee shirts and tote bags. By doing this, of course we're sending the message to corporate farming (one of the largest producers of cotton) that we vote organic!

Sources: http://www.newdream.org/consumer/cotton.php