Outrageous Claims
Refuted !

When it comes to cotton’s sustainability, exaggerated claims abound, often with no research or sources to back them up. Cotton Incorporated’s Agriculture Research team provides a few facts on the matter.

Cotton is produced using advanced technologies, including tractor-mounted sensors that can detect plants’ needs and apply inputs accordingly. This means every part of the field gets only what is needed and nothing more. This saves the producer money without compromising yield. And because the crop gets only what it needs, the potential for unwanted loss to the environment is avoided.

CLAIM: Conventionally grown cotton ranks #3 in crops with the heaviest pesticide use in the world.
FACT: Cotton uses less pesticide than many commodities, such as cereals, corn, rice and soybeans.¹

CLAIM: Conventional farming devours roughly a third of a pound of pesticides and fertilizers to produce enough cotton for a single T-shirt.
FACT: About 0.07 pounds of fertilizers and pesticides are needed for a T-shirt (only 0.002 pounds of that is pesticides).²

Since 1996, the global environmental impact of insecticide use in cotton has decreased almost 25% thanks to insect-resistant cotton.³ In the U.S., three regulatory agencies, the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Healt

CLAIM: Biotechnology (GMO crops) poses an environmental safety risk.
FACT: Biotechnology has had a positive impact on the environment by reducing the number of pesticide applications and increasing yields at the same time. There has never been a scientific study that showed any risk from the technologies used in cotton.⁴

CLAIM: Cotton uses 25% of the world’s pesticides but only 3% of that crop land is used for cotton production.
FACT: Cotton production uses less than 8% of the world’s pesticides⁵ while meeting almost half of the world’s textile needs. About 11% of the land in the world is used for agricultural production;⁶ of that, only 3% is used for cotton production.⁷

CLAIM: Toxins left on cotton products could be harmful to one’s health.
FACT: In the United States, cotton is regulated as a food crop by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Cotton is grown just like other major food crops, meaning that there are tight restrictions. Worldwide studies consistently show no pesticide residue on the raw fiber or the textile products made from the fiber.⁸

In the U.S., only 35 percent of the cotton acres receive irrigation, but for those farmers who do irrigate, special tools to determine when irrigation is needed and advanced methods of water application are utilized. This has greatly reduced the amount of irrigation water used in cotton production.⁹

CLAIM: Cotton is a water-intensive crop.
FACT: Cotton’s global water footprint is about 2.6% of the world’s water use, lower than many other commodities (e.g., soybeans 4%, maize 9%, wheat 12%, rice 21%).¹⁰ And it keeps getting better: Compared with the 1980s, growing a pound of cotton today takes approximately half as much irrigation water.

CLAIM: Cotton takes 29,000 liters of water per kilogram to produce.
FACT: The actual value is closer to 4,000 liters per kg of fiber, most of which comes from naturally occurring rainfall.¹¹ It is also important to remember that the water used to create the cotton fiber also creates cottonseed—a valuable dairy feed and oil resource.

Conservation tillage is allowing farmers to reduce soil erosion and improve soil health by increasing soil organic matter. Reducing soil erosion also improves water quality by preventing runoff of soil particles into lakes and streams. An added benefit is increased storage of carbon, a known greenhouse gas, within the soil and a reduction in the amount released into the atmosphere. In the last decade, the benefits of improved tillage practices alone are the equivalent of removing 27,000 cars from the road!

CLAIM: Cotton harms the soil.
FACT: Cotton is highly tolerant to soil and water salinity and thus can be grown with water and soil resources that would otherwise be unsuitable for food and fiber production.¹² Like all agricultural crops, managed properly, cotton production can actually improve soil quality.¹³

CLAIM: Cotton is not rotated with other crops.
FACT: In the United States, rotation of cotton with peanuts, corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa, and rice, just to name a few, is standard practice.¹⁴

Cotton-based hydromulch tackles soil erosion

In true trash-to-treasure fashion, Cotton Incorporated helped spearhead the erosion control industry’s first premium cottonbased hydromulch, HydraCX2® Cotton Fiber Reinforced Matrix. Tapping the 2.5 million tons of Grade C cotton byproduct produced in the United States each year, Cotton Incorporated worked with the USDA and Mulch & Seed Innovations, LLC, Alabama, to develop this value-add product that helps prevent soil erosion. HydraCX2 has taken the industry by storm. All the major trade publications have featured the cotton-based product in their pages, and Better Roads magazine recognized it as one of the 50 Top Rollouts for 2007.

Cottonseed: a superfeed for dairy cows

Thanks to Cotton Incorporated’s consistent messaging to U.S. dairy producers since the 1990s, whole fuzzy cottonseed is recognized as a premium feedstuff for lactating cows of high genetic merit. Cottonseed boasts a unique combination of protein, energy and effective fiber, which is why nutritionists and dairy media nationwide are promoting the continued feeding of cottonseed to top-producing cows, even during times of escalating feed prices.

The cumulative effect of improved technologies in cotton production has been to significantly decrease the energy needed to produce a bale of cotton. The energy contained in cottonseed is greater than all of the energy that it takes to produce a crop of cotton. In theory, cotton can be grown perpetually without any energy inputs. That’s sustainable!

1. Cropnois, Limited, 2007 (Edinburgh, Scotland).
2. Agricultural Chemical Usage 2003 Field Crops Summary (NASS, USDA; May 2004).
3. Brookes, G. & Barfoot, P. 2008. Global impact of biotech crops: socio-economic and environmental effects, 1996-2006. AgBioForum, 11(1):21-38.
4. Brookes, G. & Barfoot, P. (2006). GM Crops: The first 10 years, global socio-economic and environmental impacts. ISAAA Brief, 36. ISAAA: Ithaca, N.Y.
5. Cropnois, Limited, 2007 (Edinburgh, Scotland).
6. Agricultural Resources and Environmental Indicators, 2006 Edition / EIB-16, ERS/ USDA.
7. Cotton and Wool Yearbook (Updated 11/2006) Stock #89004, Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture.
8. The Bremen Cotton Exchange in Germany routinely tests for over 228 chemical substances on raw cotton fiber from growing regions around the world. These results show that all cotton, including U.S. cotton, satisfies eco-label standards.
9. NASS, 2004. Farm and ranch irrigation survey. USDA, NASS, Volume 3, Special Studies Part 1AC-02-SS-1.
10. Hoekstra, A. Y. and A. K. Chapagain. 2007. Water footprints of nations: Water use by people as a function of their consumption pattern. Water Resource Management 21:35–48.
11. Zwart, S.J. and G.M. Bastiaanssen. 2004. Review of measured crop water productivity values for irrigated wheat, rice, cotton and maize. Agricultural Water Management 69(2):115-133
12. Hanson, B., S.R. Grattan, and A. Fulton. 1999. Agricultural salinity and drainage. Oakland: University of California Division of Agricultural and Natural Resources Publication 3375.
13. H. J. Causarano, A. J. Franzluebbers, D. W. Reeves, and J. N. Shaw. 2006. Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration in Cotton Production Systems of the Southeastern United States: A Review. J. Environ. Qual. 35:1374–1383.
14. Apparent by examining cropping patterns as reported by the NASS of USDA.