Organic Cotton Fabric has been our focus since 1992.Organic cotton Fabric is the hottest trend in apparel retailing to come along in years. Nike, Whole Foods, Timberland, Patagonia, Eileen Fisher, Walt DisneyCo. and Wal-Mart are all on board. Indeed, Nike cofounded (and has contributed $150,000 to) Organic Exchange, a nonprofit organization in Oakland, Calif. that not only traffics in information but advises farmers and retailers. It certainly doesn’t hurt the image of a company demonized for importing shoes from low-wage nations. Sweatshops? Not us. We’re stopping farmers from kicking the bucket.
Organic cotton farmers fight boll weevils with ladybugs, weed their crops by hand and use manure for fertilizer. None of this is cheap. Don J. Cameron, a cotton farmer in Helm, Calif. who is featured as a successful organic cotton farmer in a video that airs in Eileen Fisher stores, farms 60 acres of organic cotton and 440 acres of the non-organic kind. Even though the former commands a price premium of 30% to 50%, he says, he doesn’t plan to expand the acreage he devotes to it. Controlling insects is a hassle. Yields fluctuate wildly. And labor to weed by hand costs $400 an acre. Cameron says he has lost money two out of the four years he has grown organic cotton: “I don’t want to jeopardize our operation any more than we have.”
But marketers love organic cotton. On its Web site Patagonia reports that conventional cotton crops in California are doused with 6.9 million pounds of chemicals every year. Loomstate says on its Web site that making a single T shirt from regular cotton requires a third of a pound of pesticide and fertilizer.
Embracing organic cotton early on cost Patagonia, the outdoor apparel retailer. After the company started using organic cotton fabrics exclusively in 1996, raw material costs doubled and its bottom line unraveled. Now the company is trying to figure out how to introduce and promote eco-friendly dyes without suffering a similar hit.
Organic Cotton