Organic cotton: the interest of men and nature
Why choose organic cotton clothing? For their softness and comfort, we wear these items on the skin.
• No GMO seeds. Lack of chemical inputs, pesticides; use of natural compost
• Water consumption halved (a simple consequence of the first point: water is especially useful for diluting inputs)
• Crop rotation to oxygenate the earth, preserve it and break the potential cycle of disease. . Improving the health of cotton producers and their families: no more dizziness, breathing difficulties, or allergies.
Conventional cotton? just too damaging
• 2.4% of the cultivated areas of the planet for 25% of the insecticides used worldwide,
• one million people poisoned by them and 20,000 deaths each year.
Article by Andrew Malone, published in the Daily Mail, November 3, 2008 (excerpts)
Shandakar has been promised millions of other farmers like him, incredible harvests and cash, if he switched from traditional seed cultivation to GM seed cultivation. Seduced by these promises of future wealth, he borrowed the money to buy transgenic seeds. But the harvests were not here and he found himself in the spiral of indebtedness and without income.
Shankara is just one of those farmers - an estimated 125,000 - to commit suicide because of this brutal offensive that uses India as a testing ground for GMOs.
This crisis called "Genocide GM" by activists received a spotlight when recently, Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GMOs was "a global moral issue" and that the moment to put an end to its inexorable advance had come.
For even the official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture confirm that, in a context of immense humanitarian crisis, more than 1000 peasants commit suicide each month.
GM cotton seed, which is protected from pests, was found not to be the promised magic seed, but was infested with the worm, a voracious parasite.
In the past, when a crop was bad, farmers could still keep seeds and replant them the following year.
However, this is not possible with GM seeds that contain Terminator technology, which means that they have been genetically modified so that the plant can no longer produce viable seeds.
As a result, farmers must buy new seeds every year at the same exorbitant price. For some this is also the difference between life and death.