mrlewishistoricalsociety

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Last question on Qset

I don't know how to answer it, I can't see a relation between clothing production and the issues of sustainability? Is anybody willing to spare a few minutes to help me out?

posted by Tlamatini @ 9:58 PM

2 Comments:

At 7:01 PM, Blogger mrlewishistoricalsociety said...

First Organic Cotton Conference

(Editor's note: This article was written by Brian Baker, with California Certified Organic Farmers. It appeared in the CCOF Statewide Newsletter, Spring 1992, Volume 9, Number 2, and was adapted for Sustainable Agriculture by David Chaney, UC SAREP.)

The first ever organic cotton conference was held in Visalia on March 11, 1992. The conference was organized by the California Institute for Rural Studies with support from UC SAREP, California Certified Organic Farmers, the Committee for Sustainable Agriculture and several other organizations and companies. It was attended by more than 250 people from every facet of the cotton and textile industry, including approximately 75 growers and 45 pest control advisers. The agenda covered all aspects of growing, processing and marketing organic cotton.

Representatives from clothing and textile manufacturers at the conference said that there is an increasing demand for organic cotton, with significant premiums going to the few growers who now raise the crop. In California, that includes two San Joaquin Valley producers certified through California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), Cal-Organics and Sally Fox, both in the Kern chapter. Several other CCOF growers have expressed interest in growing cotton on CCOF certified acreage in 1992. In addition to the limited acreage in California, four Texas growers produced organic cotton certified by the Texas Department of Agriculture on 600 acres last year.
Growing Concerns

What are the chances for increasing the acreage of organic cotton in California? The answer to that question depends on how well growers can alter their conventional production practices to suit the requirements of organic certification and the quality standards of ginners and textile manufacturers. Some of the key areas discussed at the conference are summarized here.

Soil fertility. While cotton is a relatively heavy feeder when compared with other field crops, the nutrient requirements are not as high as most vegetables. Cotton could present a useful rotation crop for organic growers who also produce canning tomatoes, vegetables, grains and forage crops in the San Joaquin Valley. Presenters noted that a fertility program based on compost, manure, and the right cover crops could adequately meet the nutrient requirements of cotton.

Pest management. Cotton accounts for more pesticide use than any other crop in California. The principal insect pest in the San Joaquin Valley is the lygus bug. Lygus can be managed by rotation of non-host crops and by strip-cropping with a preferred host, such as alfalfa, which traps the lygus. Other pests include mites and caterpillars such as the beet armyworm and cotton bollworm (Heliothis zea). These worms can be managed with beneficial insects and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).

Pest pressure is considerably greater in the Imperial and Palo Verde valleys. Pink bollworm is a significant problem in these areas, but has been mitigated somewhat by the mandatory short season that breaks the insect's reproductive cycle. Another serious cotton pest in the Imperial Valley is the sweet potato whitefly.

Once established, cotton can hold its own against weeds. A program of rotation, preirrigation and timely cultivation can keep hand labor costs to a minimum. Mechanical harvesting requires relatively weed-free fields.

Defoliation. The biggest question for California organic cotton producers is how to defoliate the crop prior to harvest. Under conventional production practices, this is accomplished using synthetic chemicals. In fact, almost half of the pesticides used on cotton in California are defoliants (two of the three currently registered in California are on the SB 950 list for possible suspension).

Defoliants serve three purposes: 1) they make mechanical harvest easier by eliminating the leaves that may jam the picker; 2) they prevent the staining of the cotton by chlorophyll that would still be in live leaves; 3) they reduce the moisture content of the seed cotton by stopping evapotranspiration in the canopy.

While it is possible to mechanically harvest cotton without defoliation, it is more difficult than with defoliation and can reduce quality by several grades. The presence of foliage results in a higher moisture content of the harvested cotton, which in turn requires greater care and attention during the drying and ginning process. Moreover, as the cotton is stacked into large "modules" in the field, it may actually begin to compost if the cotton is too moist. (The modules are a convenient way to transport and store seed cotton before it is ginned.) In some cases the decomposition process may produce temperatures in excess of 130 F. Additionally, San Joaquin Valley growers are required to plow down their crop residue by December 20 for pink bollworm control. This date necessitates early defoliation in order to complete harvest and land preparation. Under these circumstances, natural defoliation by frost is not a possibility.

CCOF growers have used several different naturally occurring materials to defoliate, with little success. Other possibilities explored included a machine developed in the 1960s that defoliated cotton with heat from propane gas. While the defoliation and quality were comparable with chemical defoliation, the cost of the machine and fuel made thermal defoliation uncompetitive. Variations of this machine may be economically feasible if it is linked to the power take-off or electrical system of the tractor.

Perhaps the best way to prepare a crop for harvest is to manage the nutrients and water so that the cotton plant will naturally stop growing. Cotton harvested without defoliants may have a small amount of green staining, and should be ginned immediately after harvest. If the cotton could be picked into trailers, rather than built into modules, excessive moisture and decomposition could be reduced.

The steps in processing from the gin to finishing are largely mechanical. A few production aids may be used in spinning and weaving. Finishing and dying are mostly chemical processes. These stages of the manufacturing process will require the most attention if apparel manufacturers want to label finished products "organic"

Information about the organic cotton conference and future events can be obtained from Will Allen at the California Institute for Rural Studies, (916) 756-6555 or (209) 544-9677. For more information about CCOF Certified Organic Cotton, contact CCOF at (408) 423-2263.

 
At 7:11 PM, Blogger mrlewishistoricalsociety said...

Your cheap sweater's real cost
That cheap cashmere sweater exacts a hidden price: dust-borne pollution that reaches America. Part one of a Tribune special report.
By Evan Osnos
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published December 16, 2006

ON THE ALASHAN PLATEAU, China -- Shatar the herdsman scanned the ruined grasslands where Genghis Khan once galloped.

He frowned into the twilight and called his goats. The wind tasted like dust.

On the other side of the world, another morning dawned in the historic embrace between the world's low-cost factory and its best customer. Every second of every day last year, America gobbled up $7,720 worth of Chinese goods--including millions of cashmere sweaters made from goats like Shatar's.

In less than a decade, a deluge of cheap cashmere from China has transformed a centuries-old industry, stripping the plush fabric of its pricey pedigree and making it available in big-box America. Target now sells Chinese cashmere sweaters for as little as $19.99.

But behind the inexpensive Made in China tag is something Americans rarely see: the cascade of consequences around the world when the full might of Chinese production and U.S. consumption converge on a scarce natural resource.

Of all the grand ways to measure the impact of China's ascent--the mountains of exports, the armadas of oil tankers--there might seem little reason to take stock of a commodity as innocuous as cashmere. Yet the improbable connection between cheap sweaters, Asia's prairies and America's air captures how the most ordinary shifts in the global economy are triggering extraordinary change.

This is the story of how your sweater pollutes the air you breathe--and how the rise of China shapes the world.

The country's enormous herds of cashmere-producing goats have slashed the price of sweaters. But they also have helped graze Chinese grasslands down to a moonscape, unleashing some of the heaviest dust storms on record and fueling a plume of pollution heavy enough to reach the skies over North America.

China's breakneck consumption of raw materials is part of an economic revolution that has lifted 400 million of its own people from poverty but at a growing environmental cost around the globe. And with their burgeoning appetite for Chinese goods, American consumers have become crucial if unwitting partners, financing the political survival of Beijing's one-party regime.

Not only has China's demand for resources proved strong enough to turn its grasslands into a Dust Bowl, it has driven illegal logging into prized tropical forests and restaged a risky Great Game for control of vital oil supplies.

Every product--every T-shirt, every SUV, every child's toy--has a global footprint defined by the resources and energy used to make it. In the case of cashmere, America snapped up a record-smashing 10.5 million Chinese sweaters last year, 15 times as many as a decade ago, more than every cashmere sweater produced last year by Italy, the United Kingdom and the U.S. combined.

No one accuses goats of spawning China's choking air pollution. It's impossible to say how much cashmere or any single product contributes to that problem. But to understand the impact of China's cashmere industry is to understand the vast origins of China's pollution crisis.

If the nation's filthy air were a toxic river, cashmere would be one of the streams that feeds it.

The spike in demand for cashmere alone is taking a measurable toll on the soil, air and water in China and the U.S.--a cost that never appears on any store's tag. And many consumers are unaware of the link.

"I would never have imagined,'' Colleen Young said amid the bulk Cheerios and plasma TVs at a Costco on Chicago's North Side. "When you're shopping for a sweater, you would never think of pollution. Maybe the poor animal. Maybe slave labor, but never pollution."

Still, she gazed appreciatively at the $69.99 lavender crewneck in her hands, pulling at the Chinese-made sweater's waistline to test the quality. "That's a really good price,'' she said. "This is every bit as nice as the one I bought at Bloomingdale's."

A grassless prairie
Photo gallery: A grassland gone


As goats go, Shatar's are thoroughbreds--crystal-white coats, pure bloodlines and the durability to withstand China's punishing north, where summer boils to 107 degrees and winter sinks to 33 degrees below zero.

Straddling the Mongolian border, far from China's throbbing cities, the Alashan Plateau produces the world's most expensive cashmere--that silky underlayer of a goat's hair that sells for at least six times the price of ordinary wool. Side by side under a microscope, Alashan cashmere makes a single human hair look like rope.

Shatar, who like most Chinese nomads uses one name, grew up here. Creased by the sun, the 51-year-old has ridden two decades of China's cashmere boom, expanding his herd by one-third, to more than 300, and steadily pushing production. The profits have given him a small three-room house and paid for his daughter's college education.

But something in Alashan has gone wrong.

Shatar called his goats once more, and the animals trudged into view. Their wispy coats fluttered in the wind. They limped up a hill and slumped to the ground around him. They were starving.

"Look at them. They have nothing to eat," Shatar said. Throwing handfuls of dry corn, he added, "If it keeps up this way, I'll have to sell half the animals."

This stretch of China's mythic grasslands, one of the world's largest prairies, is running out of grass. The land is so barren that Shatar and other herders buy cut grass and corn by the truckload, year-round, to keep their animals alive. Goats are so weak that some herders carry the stragglers home by motorcycle. Shatar expects most of his goats will live 10 years, half the life span of their parents.

The animals' birthrate is sinking too. Shatar once had 100 new goats each spring. This year he got 40. Even the precious cashmere has begun to suffer. Hungry goats are sprouting shorter, coarser, less valuable fleece.

Shatar crouched to grab a handful of gravelly dust from his family land. When he was young, it was carpeted in green.

"Our life depends on nature," he said softly. "Things are getting worse year by year." He stood and cast aside the handful of thin, russet-colored earth. It vanished into the breeze.

Cashmere goes big box
Graphics: The hidden costs of cashmere


The "diamond fiber," as cashmere is known, has shed some sparkle. There are cashmere bikinis and hoodies, jogging suits and baby clothes. Target is pushing a tousled "Casual Cashmere Look."

Of all cashmere products, though, nothing changed faster than the humble sweater. China sells its cashmere sweaters to America for just $38 on average, a full 75 percent off the import price of the Scottish version.

The sudden shift from elite to everywhere has convulsed an industry that once prided itself on exclusivity.

"This growth has been truly incredible," said Andy Bartmess, chief operating officer of Scottish cashmere producer Dawson International. In a September speech to Chinese producers, Bartmess pleaded with them to halt the tumbling price. "Cashmere has a hundred-plus-year history as a luxury product," he said. "The last few years have begun to destroy that reputation."

The Capra hircus, a.k.a. the goat, keeps its most valuable asset hidden. Its cashmere is combed each spring from beneath the coarse "guard hair" of the goat's outer coat. It takes two or three animals to produce a sweater, twice that for a sport coat.

Many have tried to breed cashmere goats outside the bleak, harsh plateaus and mountains of Asia, but few have succeeded. That has left global supplies of the stuff at roughly 15,000 tons a year--70 percent of it from China.

Until recently, not much had changed in the business since the 16th Century when Kashmiri craftsmen spun shawls out of material delivered to India by Silk Road caravans from China, Afghanistan and northern Persia. Very little ever came from Kashmir itself, but the name stuck. By the early 19th Century, French Empress Eugenie created an icon by wearing shawls delicate enough to be drawn through a ring. In the 1870s, Scottish mill owner Joseph Dawson mechanized the processing of cashmere, and a blue-blood tradition was born.

The whiff of empire endured: For decades, Chinese and Mongolian herders sold nearly all their raw fiber to Europe and the U.S. for Western mills to process and sell. Brands such as Italy's Loro Piana and Scotland's Pringle were the Western outlets for China's raw material.

"The president of Dawson would come over [to Beijing] like a king and say `50 tons from here, 80 tons from there.' He would stay in the presidential suite," said Christian Murphy, the British-born managing director of Beijing-based Alphatex Knitting Co. "That's how business was done."

From the grasslands to the shelf, it was a stable, stodgy business.

Deng Xiaoping changed that. In 1979 the Chinese leader launched his historic drive toward a market economy, and China's garment industry exploded. In a pattern that later would ripple through products from electronics to furniture, China swiftly claimed the bulk of the world's $350 billion textile trade.

China now exports an estimated 20 billion finished garments a year--more than three pieces of clothing for every person on Earth.

 

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