Cotton: the fabric that takes lives

By Ann Thomas

I sit outside with a group of students and my homestay family looking at the dry, desert-like landscape. A row or two of withered cotton plants blow helplessly in the plot next to us.

I listen as a neighbor explains the tragic event that occurred a week earlier: He found his entire family dead when he came home from working in the field. His wife had fed chemical pesticides intended to make their family's crops more productive to her three children and then drank some herself.

I am in a small farming village in the state of Maharashtra, India, where suicides of this nature are common. Since 1997, over 25,000 farmers have committed suicide.

Cotton is the primary crop of this area, but families are struggling to maintain a livelihood from this once-prosperous industry.

What has driven thousands to take their lives and the lives of their family members?

Pesticides, drought, seeds and debt. Pesticides are expensive. Water is limited. Money is hard to come by. And seeds were supposed to solve the problem.

Bt cotton, a genetically modified breed that contains a pesticide that repels pests like the annoying bulworm, was "guaranteed" to increase yields on cotton crops.

The Indian government endorsed this policy, and Western agrochemical companies like Monsanto could not be more delighted by the prospect of reaping profits from spreading their seeds internationally.

Unfortunately, more often than not, farmers that have taken the bait and planted the more expensive Bt cotton plant find that yields are worse than before.

Many now face enormous debt to Western businesses that sold them the seed. Why don't farmers go back to using their old seeds? Some are trying, but it is more difficult than it may seem.

In many regions, Bt cotton has spread and contaminated many native species, making it nearly impossible to re-establish what was planted before. This depressing situation continues as we speak.

Approximately seven people per day commit suicide in Madhya Pradesh, the neighboring state of Maharashtra, but others still hope for a brighter future. Organic cotton, less risky yet more labor intensive to cultivate, might provide a viable solution.

Why should this story concern people like you and me?

I guarantee something you are wearing while you read this article contains cotton. Could that cotton have come from a farm in India? There is a good chance it did, since India is the second-largest cotton-growing country in the world.

What are the lives like of the people growing the cotton? Are they facing the same difficulties that families like my homestay family were? Is the cotton you're wearing organic?

I am not here to sell you organic cotton. And my purpose in writing these articles is not to depress readers. It is simply to share the stories I have experienced and heard over the past year and have come back compelled to tell.

I spent the past year studying the impacts of globalization in five countries around the world: England, Tanzania, India, New Zealand and Mexico. Coming back to Santa Clara, I found how easy it is to get caught up in all that we, as college students, are involved with.

It is easy to forget all the people and places we impact every day. Through my travels, I have realized how important it is to remember that we are part of an interdependent world and are constantly affecting others as a consequence of globalization.

Too often we look for an "easy fix" to make ourselves feel better -- giving to charity, boycotting certain goods. But when it comes down to it, what is really important is changing the way that we think so that our actions follow soon after. The first step in changing the way we think is to become more educated about world issues.

What we wear, what we buy, our daily choices impact many people -- including cotton farmers in India -- and places around the world, whether we acknowledge it or not.

It is now up to us to take responsibility for those choices.

Ann Thomas is a senior who spent a year studying globalization around the world. She is an environmental studies and political science double major.