

Could that be right?

A few quick calculations and a minute or two on the Internet allows this comparison. If a jumbo jet's fuel tank capacity is 40,000 gallons and each gallon weighs roughly 6 pounds, then the total weight of fuel comes to 240,000 pounds. Two of the big jets would carry roughly 480,000 pounds of fuel.


Or maybe that was two mini-vans?

According to Cotton Incorporated this is one of many examples of the flow of misinformation about cotton going out over cyberspace, the airwaves and print media. For example, the aforementioned mugging of conventional cotton occurred on a Wal-Mart Web site in the fall of 2005, as a result of information it received from the Organic Exchange.


“One example of what we can achieve came from experimenting with organic cotton. We introduced organic cotton outfits to 290 stores this year, and our customers bought virtually all of them in just 10 weeks — that's 190,000 units. So, we expanded our organic practice to include select bath, bed and baby products.


Again, the math doesn't work, according to an analysis by Cotton Incorporated. If one pound of fiber was consumed for each unit sold, then 190,000 pounds of fiber were used to produce the organic outfits. When you divide 190,000 pounds of cotton into 500,000 pounds of pesticide, you get 2.6 pounds of pesticide per pound.



“A lot of these myths get recycled whether it's the amount of pesticides that are used or the amount of water that's used and labor required. The latest cycle is somewhat different because we are in a global sourcing economy. Cotton is moved all over the world. The environmental angle gets mixed with other political angles and fair trade. It almost becomes a lethal mix when you combine enough misinformation. It almost becomes fact in the minds of the retailers and brands.”


In reality, notes Cantrell, “Cotton accounts for 8.5 percent of the world's use of pesticides. In the United States, where data are available, about 0.038 ounces of pesticides are used to grow enough cotton for a t-shirt. They're off by a factor of 150X.”

Cantrell notes that biotechnology has allowed U.S. producers to decrease pesticide applications and increase yields, both of which have significant environmental benefits. But the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture doesn't think so. Here is a comment from its Web site:

“The rapid spread of genetic engineering in agriculture poses grave threats to family farmers and sustainable agriculture. Transgenic manipulation has emerged as a strong component of industrial agriculture, boasting unsubstantiated promises of increasing food production for the world's hungry masses and solving disease and pest problems.




“Organic is not sustainable in the sense that you can ramp that production up to meet the total needs of the market. Sustainability is not just about organic cotton. It's about good production practices that are good for the environment.”