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For many food crops, the process of getting them from the farm to your fork is relatively simple. Take apples for example. It is selected and cleaned, then graded to determine where it will end up. If bound for a supermarket, it is tagged and placed on a pallet with other apples before being loaded onto a delivery truck. That process gets a little more complicated for imported or exported foods, but it’s the same process.
Now take a cotton shirt. Before it ends up on the store shelves, it grows in the field. But how did he get to the store? First, cotton is picked and cleaned by the farmer, just like our apples. It is also graded to determine if it can be wrapped with fiber. The cotton is bundled together and transported from the farm to the processing plant, possibly located in Vietnam or India. Those processors turn the cotton into yarn or processable fiber and then send it to garment factories to make the right garment. These factories can be in Cambodia or China. If the dress has a cover, that is made separately. Maybe the dress has embroidery; It is another factory in another country. Maybe the dress is white or colored. Eventually all the pieces are ready to be shaped together, so they are all sent to the tailors, this time in El Salvador, who put them all together, before being sent back to America to be sold.
It’s a long way for a cotton dress.
At a time when consumers are paying more attention to our food supply, there hasn’t been much discussion around fiber crops in America, especially cotton. The United States is the world’s largest exporter of cotton. In the 2019-2020 season, almost all US production 20 million husbands From cotton, worth about $7 billion.
There are about 18,600 cotton farms Across the country, It is found mainly in the southern regions Like Texas, Georgia, Arkansas and Mississippi. While cotton is the primary fiber crop grown in the US, there are growing numbers of hemp and flax farms in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the Midwest. How are those farmers approaching regenerative agriculture? And what can you do to offset the high production that goes into fashion manufacturing?
For one cotton farmer in Texas, the answer may be to downsize. Jeremy Brown farms about 5,000 acres of cotton outside of Lubbock, Texas. They are co-owners with his wife, Brown. Broadview Agriculture, an agricultural S corporation and oversees a dozen farms in the region. Moving further in for him Redevelopment practices He may give away some of his land – he is safer than him.
Texas cotton farmer Jeremy Brown. Photo by Broadview Agriculture Inc.
“I’m at a point where I want to get better on the ground I have, even if it means less,” Brown says. “At first I fell into the trap of thinking that I had to farm all these acres, and now I want to farm the land I want, where it’s suitable for my work and the landowners are like-minded.” While Brown isn’t in the process of releasing the land yet, he says he could farm about 1,000 acres as a start.
It’s an unusual message from a farmer, but one that Brown thinks a lot about. In the year Around 2013, Brown decided to convert a small amount of land into an organic cotton operation. It takes three years to become a certified organic farm, and he wanted to try. At the time, he saw organic farming as a way to increase income.
The results were a revelation. Brown wasn’t spraying chemicals like he normally would on the ground, but he was getting good results. “I started seeing things from a different perspective,” he said. That’s when he discovered regenerative farming practices and thought he was “focusing on the wrong thing.” Like other farmers, he was busy farming, but what if he turned his attention to the soil?
“When I look at my profit and loss statements, as a business owner, organically [and regenerative] It was cotton that was constantly making me more money,” says Brown. It might not be making more pounds, but dollars per acre, I was definitely making more money.
In response, Brown began converting more of his land to organic and regenerative practices, and now nearly 3,500 of his 5,000 acres are certified organic. Still, he’s definitely in the minority. Even Brown’s neighbors are skeptical about making the switch. “When I talk to my neighbors about regenerative agriculture, they immediately say, ‘Well, that won’t work here, because the weeds are too bad or the climate is too bad,'” says Brown.
And if most cotton growers shy away from renewable practices, that makes our cotton clothing’s environmental footprint even bigger. It represents organic cotton Less than one percent Cotton grown in the USA, but maybe other certifications would help. When the USDA confirms Organic farmsThere are no large governing bodies specifically dealing with fiber and textile farms. Tasha Lewis, associate professor of fashion and retail studies at Ohio State University, says that may need to change.
“It can be good to have these certifications, because people can understand what it means,” Lewis said. How the Consumer Product Safety Commission looks at it can resemble a government agency. Textile safety. Or, as Lewis says, it could be a large industry association that comes together to demonstrate the sustainability of its fashion brands. “The demand is there,” she says. But the industry is still mysterious.
“We really need transparency. Think about the farm-to-table movement,” says Lewis. Consumers pushed for more transparency, and a trend toward local and regional cooking emerged. However, because so much information can be proprietary, “transparency is difficult for the apparel industry,” she says. Some companies are really experimenting with keeping their factory listings. [where they produce their garments]. That means they know where their competitors are doing their best.
Are there any fibers or fabrics that are more sustainable or environmentally friendly than others? Should we all opt for cotton wool or embrace athletic lycra? According to Lewis, just like with food, consumers should pick their poison. If eating organic was high on their priority list, they would buy organic more than anything else. If one cares about local food or vegetarian dishes, their focus is on those. Consumers adjust their purchases to match their priorities. It should be the same as the dress.
“If you’re thinking more about groundwater use, maybe bamboo is best or flax. But cotton is a very thirsty crop and [conventionally grown cotton] It needs a lot of pesticides. But if you think about the chemicals that are being pushed into the environment, bamboo might not be that big of a deal,” Lewis explains. “Now it’s polyester, which is derived from petroleum. But it doesn’t require a lot of hot water when you clean it, which cuts a lot of energy used for consumer care levels.
Although Lewis is a big proponent of buying used clothing and recycling, there is essentially no perfect fiber to choose from. near 95% of textiles can be recycled, even polyester. There is even. An apron made from old jeans.
So, there are ways to get more life out of clothes and change the fiber fields. But what can be done about the global spectacle of transferring fibers back and forth when it comes to making clothes?
Some of the changes will come down to consumer demand, but there are insiders pushing for new developments. Arizona Moses, a model and activist, wanted to know more about the clothes she was being paid to wear. The more she looked at her clothes, the more Moses realized that much of the clothing supply chain was opaque and hidden. “It’s so far away that people don’t even think about where our clothes come from,” she says. “This is what led me down the path of sustainability. Where is the wonder? [my clothes] are from Who made them? What effects are they having? “Moses established GarbageA charity that consults with fashion brands on sustainable agricultural practices.
Arizona Muse is advocating for regenerative agriculture in fashion. Photo by Theodra Berglund.
After learning more about the process by which most clothing is made, Moses advocates for more closed-loop systems in the production cycle. “I personally think that we should go to regenerated natural fibers, with dyes made from non-toxic chemicals, kept in a closed loop as much as possible and filtered until it returns to any natural water. It has been renewed.
Moses encourages us to rethink how much we are willing to pay for our clothes. We expect to still find that cotton garment for sale after it has been shipped around the world. “We expect farmers to do whatever we want, to grow whatever we need. And we expect to pay an unfair price. [to] The farmers. “You can’t produce these things in a climate-resilient way while the expected costs are so low,” says Moses. “I like to think that sustainable production is the right price. It is more expensive than conventional products, but this is the food-friendly price and the price is very low.
The discussion about replanting food crops started with farmers and spread to the community. Now, that could be — and many would argue. must be.– It occurs widely in discussions about our clothing. Some consumers may decide to pay more for an organic apple or buy apples at a farmers market, directly supporting a local farmer. In the case of apparel, those options are widely available, but changing the industry will require a concerted effort from farmers, consumers and brands. Until then, that simple cotton dress represents something much more complicated than it seems.
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