Is the U.S. Cotton Industry in Danger of Collapse?

The view from the Panoche Cotton Gin outside Firebaugh, Calif., reveals a great deal about the state of the cotton industry in the U.S. A generation ago, fields of cotton surrounded the gin as far as the eye could see. Today, the gin -- a warehouse-sized plant that can clean and bundle dozens of tons of cotton a day -- is flanked on all sides by almond orchards, groves upon groves of the tall trees.

"Cotton used to be king -- it was our No. 1 crop," Joseph Maron, the operations supervisor for the gin, told a group of visitors on a bright autumn day. "Now it's all pistachios or almonds. The cotton industry is slowly disappearing."

Quickly disappearing may be more like it. This year, California farmers are growing about 550,000 acres of cotton -- a decrease from just two years ago, and a sharp decline from a historic peak of 1.5 million acres. Growers expect the number to drop to less than half a million acres in the next few years. The number of cotton gins has also plummeted. There used to be more than 100 gins in the San Joaquin Valley; now there are half that many.

Why are cotton planters facing a state of collapse? For the same reason that soy farmers, tomato growers, and apple orchards are struggling: international competition. It's simply cheaper to grow cotton in Pakistan, India, or Turkey than it is in California, Arizona, or Texas.

The globalization of agriculture is certainly bad news for growers who have never known anything except cotton. It's also troubling for the advocates who are spearheading a campaign for organic and low-spray cotton. As they promote a way of clothing ourselves that doesn't involve stripping the earth naked, backers of sustainable agriculture are finding that the economic imperatives of a global economy are making their work harder than they ever expected.

"The market for domestic organic cotton has completely disappeared, because the price of overseas cotton is half as much," says Marcia Gibbs, program director of the Sustainable Cotton Project. "If you were a farmer, you'd be a fool to grow organic cotton if you weren't sure you'd get a living wage for your work. We're seeing a big increase in people interested in organic cotton, but we're not seeing people step up to the plate with their pocketbooks."

It's In the Jeans

Cotton is one of the most chemical-dependent crops, with conventional growers using a battery of herbicides and pesticides to control weeds and insects. Most cotton fields -- at least 70 percent in the U.S. -- are also genetically modified, as farmers come to depend more and more on Roundup Ready seed. The reliance on chemical inputs has been blamed for a range of problems, from water contamination to unusually high cancer rates.

In an effort to reduce the environmental impacts of cotton production, the Sustainable Cotton Project tries to enlist farmers in a program to convert to organic. But it has been a tough row to hoe. Nationwide, there are no more than 12 organic-certified cotton growers, according to the Organic Trade Association. In California, there are just two -- and that's double from a year ago.

The effort is greatly complicated by the fact that cotton -- a gangly, four-foot shrub whose flower forms the downy fiber manufacturers prize -- needs to drop its leaves before it can be mechanically harvested. Otherwise, the green leaves can stain the cotton, and make it wet and susceptible to mildew. The most common way to pick cotton, then, is to first spray a chemical defoliant on it -- hardly an organic solution. Organic cotton growers in Turkey and Pakistan often pay people to handpick the bolls, and don't use defoliants, but that's not a viable option in the U.S.

"We can't compete with a grower that has low labor costs," says Frank Williams, a co-owner of Windfall Farms I in Firebaugh. This year, Williams and his brother-in-law grew 40 acres of organic cotton on their 1,300 acres, and they plan to quadruple that next season. But it's a gamble for their business. "It's economics," Williams says. "All of our acres of cotton, I don't know that we make hardly anything on it. There are other competing crops that make a lot more money. The only thing that saves us is the government subsidies."