On Cotton from a 2009 report In India, low prices for cotton and high prices for chemicals have caused tens of thousands of farmers to go bankrupt. As a result, there have been more than 20,000 cotton farmer suicides since 1995. Additional thousands of Indian farmers sold their kidneys into the world organ market to pay their pesticide and fertilizer bill to Monsanto, Cargill or multinational banks. * In Africa more than ten million people directly depend on cotton exports for their livelihood. Mali, Benin, and Burkina Faso have lost twice as much on the drop in cotton prices as they received in US foreign aid. This has driven more than 4% of each country¹s population into abject poverty and prompted a common African lament which goes: The more we produce The more we export The poorer we get! * More than a million Mexican farmers lost their land since the passage of NAFTA and the subsequent dumping of surplus US corn, cotton, wheat and other crops The dumping of subsidized crops (especially corn and cotton) into the Mexican markets drove prices below the cost of production. Small farmers could not compete and were driven out of business and off the land. * In 1946 the average size of the US cotton farm was 17 acres and there were more than a million cotton farmers. Today, cotton farms average over 1,000 acres. Before NAFTA there were 40,000 cotton farms, today, there are only 20,000 left. * Only 36% of the US farmers receive all of the crop subsidies. 64% of US farmers receive none. Only 3.6% of the US farmers received 71% of all the government payments. The next 3.6% got 15%, which means that 7.2% of the farms received 86% of all the US subsidy payments. * Besides being highly subsidized, cotton is the most toxic crop in the world. Cotton uses more than twenty-five percent of all the insecticides in the world and 12% of all the pesticides. Cotton growers use 25% of all the pesticides used in the US. Yet cotton is farmed on only 3% of the world¹s farmland. * California is one of the only states where farmers are required to provide pesticide use reports. The California EPA reported that only15 chemicals accounted for 77% of the pesticides used on cotton from 1989 to 1998 and that these were some of the most toxic chemicals in the world. Cal EPA and US EPA analyses illustrate that seven of these fifteen most used cotton chemicals were probable cancer-causing pesticides, eight caused tumors and five caused mutations. Twelve of the top fifteen cotton pesticides in California caused birth defects, ten caused multiple birth defects, and thirteen were toxic or very toxic to fish or birds or both. * On the average, seven times as many pounds of toxic fertilizer are regularly used on cotton as are pesticides. Cotton fertilizers have fouled the air and polluted rivers, groundwater basins and aquifers wherever cotton is grown. * Cotton fertilizers and pesticides have killed and injured millions of fish, birds, and other wildlife as well as countless thousands of rural residents. * 75% of the cotton and cottonseed in the US is genetically modified. * In the US we eat or drink more cotton products than we sleep on, wash with, or wear.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 16:31:13 +0000
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