With sustainable cotton in fashion, India's farmers seek fair price
WARANGAL: Two decades ago, Damera Yakamma's husband, a cotton farmer in a southern Indian village, committed suicide by consuming pesticide because of his mounting debts, leaving his widow in charge of their two acres of land.
After that, the mother of four — then in her mid-twenties — decided she did not want any more chemicals entering her home.
With the help of a non-profit in Telangana state's Warangal district, Yakamma and some other local farmers grew their first organic cotton crop in 2005 using natural manure and bio-pesticides.
They benefited from lower costs, better health and soil, and premium market prices as buyers sought their higher-quality cotton.
But they lost their organic certification in 2015 after a genetically modified cotton variety known as BT, promising higher yields and pest resistance, spread so widely across India that they could no longer buy indigenous seeds from dealers.
Still the farmers stuck with natural growing methods to produce cotton sustainably, in a bid to meet growing demand from fashion brands that are increasingly adopting targets to cut climate-heating emissions in their value chains.
According to the Confederation of British Industry, in 2020 sustainable cotton accounted for nearly 20% of the global cotton supply.
Demand is rising by 20% per year, with many leading garment manufacturers pledging to use only sustainable cotton by 2025 in response to consumer concerns over the environment.
About six million farmers in India cultivate cotton on 12 million hectares, producing a quarter of the world’s cotton, making it a key market for scaling up sustainable production.
In response, global initiatives that work with the fashion industry are promoting sustainable cultivation
