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| Organic Cotton Farming in India |
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| Cotton is the most important fibre crop, with a production of 21 million tons of lint in 2003. Major producing countries are China, the US, India, Pakistan and Brazil, but cotton also plays a major role in the economies of a number of Central and West African countries. The current crisis in cotton revolves around the main issues, such as rising cost of production, hiked use of pesticides without adequate pest suppression, inability to enhance production even during the bountiful monsoon due to ineffective water management, deterioration in genetic purity multitude of cotton varieties and hybrid seeds, inadequate price support and paucity of infrastructure to ensure value additions at the farmer's level. |
COTTON PICTURE |
Deterioration of the quality of soil as a natural resource is evident in the traditional cotton belt. High external input based cropping has degraded the soil water system, depleted soil organic carbon stocks and fertility.. Imbalanced fertilizer application, accelerated soil loss and exclusion of organic sources, combined with overuse of nitrogen compels the crop to exploit soil reserves for other nutrients, creating multiple nutrient deficiencies.
Cotton is a semi-xerophyte and forced annual. Its vegetative growth and duration is linearly related to water supply over a wide input range. However, harvest index is higher at lower water supplies. Thus, a greater proportion of total biomass is proportioned to reproductive structures as water stress is increased. This underlying principle entails that cotton needs only life-saving irrigation to circumvent severe stress at the critical boll development stage. However, in both rainfed and irrigated cotton belts, the water management is supply driven, with no regulatory mechanism. |
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In this scenario, an increasing number of farmers turn to organic cultivation in order to restore soil fertility, reduce production costs or to get a better price for their certified organic harvest. In the South, the conversion of smallholder farms to organic cotton is usually facilitated by companies or NGOs, which provide extension and inputs, and organize for the certification, processing and marketing of the produce.
Major markets for organic cotton textiles are Europe ( Germany , Switzerland , UK , Sweden ), the US and Japan . Consumers in industrialized countries buy organic cotton for health reasons (reduced risk of skin irritation and allergies), but also to spare the environment from agro-chemicals and to support farmers in the South.
In achieving a sustainable livelihood. While originally most organic cotton production has been processed into garments containing 100% organic cotton fibre, there is a trend that large garment brands are blending a certain percentage (usually 5-10%) of organic fibres with conventional ones.
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Organic Cotton Projects in India 
