Did you know that the cultivation of cotton is grown on just 2.4% of the world’s arable land and consumes 11% of the world’s pesticides and in the United States cotton is cultivated on 4% of the land and uses 25% of all pesticides applied in agriculture for cotton?
The Sustainability of Cotton specifies that cotton requires large amounts of water both for cultivation and processing. Cotton is overtaking our water sources because rivers are being diverted and dammed off. By doing this, it is having significant effects on wildlife and water availability for human consumption. Water use can be reduced by introducing more sustainable irrigation techniques to reduce salinisation and erosion. Farmers need to reduce salinisation in order to reuse the land already farmed and not have to continue to cut down forests and dam water sources. Salinisation occurs when evapo-transpiration exceeds rainfall and is a threat for irrigated areas in particular. Farmers also need to consider rain-fed regions, convert to low-input conventional farms, and to decrease in water consumption. If farmers took the time, they could use livestock manure as a fertilizer which would supply nutrients to the crops and contribute to soil biological processes, soil structure, root penetrability and water retention. When using a synthetic fertilizer, it can contribute to global warming because the production of nitrate and ammonium needs a lot of energy giving organic manure an advantage.
On the website of Cotton, Inc., it specifies several uses for cotton that can help earth such as using cotton as mulch to help prevent erosion but it goes through a lot of dye processing and becomes all natural mulch for grass. Cotton also helps trap carbon and takes out approximately CO2 emissions from 7 million cars. Cotton can be good for the earth, but we need to find better ways of cultivating the crop.
Organic agriculture protects the health of people and the planet by reducing the overall exposure to toxic chemicals from synthetic pesticides that can end up in the ground, air, water and food supply. Because organic agriculture doesn't use toxic and persistent pesticides, choosing organic products is an easy way to help protect yourself.
Maegen, I viewed that same video on Cotton Inc. about how they use the rest of the cotton plant for food products, mulch, and also cattle feed. I think that is a great way to recycle the product but I do not think that holds enough weights to outweigh the negative impacts that it causes to the earth because of the pesticides. Organic cotton would protect ourselves in the long run because pesticides are not used. But in order for organic cotton to be a success, as consumers, we will all have to start buying organic instead of natural cotton which will be a hard goal to accomplish. Cotton is in such high demand right now and many people will not want to spend more for organic cotton.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree that we need to start buying organic, but there is already a lot of cotton people own that has had peticides put on them and instead of letting them pile up in the landfill, we need to find good use for them and trasform our consuming into organic.
DeleteMaegen,
ReplyDeleteYour blog was very interesting. It is easy to forget about all of the pesticides being used in agriculture when we focus so much on water consumption. The facts about salinasation were interesting, but I am not quite sure what salinasation is exactly. Could you explain a little about what it is? What are the negative impacts of salinisation in particular?
Salinisation occurs when evapo-transpiration exceeds rainfall and is a threat for irrigated areas in particular.
DeletePer the www.landlearnnsw.org.au/sustainability/climate-change/glossary,changes in water movement patterns across the landscape, as during the wet and dry periods, can alter the height of the underlying water table. Land management practices such as land clearing can affect the soil moisture, sometimes resulting in more rainfall reaching the groundwater recharge. Rising water tables can bring dissolved salts to within two metres of the soil surface; capillary action then carries the salts to the soil surface, usually on lower slopes. There, the salts are concentrated by evaporation, killing vegetation cover and forming scalds, and may be discharged by runoff into surface waters where they affect water quality. Erosion of affected areas causes further problems and salt mobilisation. Salt export to downstream waterways may place water resources, aquatic ecosystems, farm dams, riparian vegetation and wetland areas at risk.