"Cotton is the best and worst of humanity"

Picking the brains of Simon Ferrigno who's one of the leading researchers and experts about cotton and sustainability

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Cotton is a perfect example of how misleading information can taint the reputation of a single material and crop. But cotton cultivation is a complex topic with several environmental and social issues to consider. So to dive deeper, we took the chance to talk to one of the leading experts in the cotton and sustainability field: Simon Ferrigno.

And we’re super excited to share this read with you. Because Simon is a Derby-based freelance researcher and writer with over 20 years of experience working on sustainability – with a focus on alternatives such as organic cotton and Integrated Pest Management (IPM). He has researched the impacts of pesticide and insecticide use on human health and the environment in Africa and has taken part in heritage projects focusing on Black History in Nottingham. He writes for Ecotextile News and is the author of two books on cotton and sustainability.

To read to entire issue and learn from Simon’s experience, consider upgrading to a pro subscription.

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Simon, you’ve spent a lot of your time researching cotton. What do you feel when you think about cotton?

Personally, I think it’s a great fiber, it makes great fabric. And I like cotton because I have the kind of skin that does not like synthetics. Professionally, I look at how it's tied to humanity since we started settling down into villages, into farming. It's one of the first major non-food crops. So it also is something that illustrates when humans were able to go from subsisting to creating other things. A lot of the old textiles we find are not just functional, some of them are decorative. But the more you look at it, you see that cotton also means inequality. For me, cotton is the best and worst of humanity.

What are some of the inequalities cotton is linked to?

If I think back to all the villages I’ve visited over the years, where you look around at the children, you think about which one would be a doctor, which one would be an astrophysicist and they won't have that opportunity because our world has been shaped by colonialism and slavery. I've stood on the border in Uganda and watched cotton coming over, guarded by children with Kalashnikovs. That's the world we live in. That's the world of historic injustice and inequality. Cotton-growing countries are not making the textiles but big textile companies in Europe and the US are. Why? Because of that historic inequality. We're still not looking at how we can use global trade to restore and overturn some of those injustices, and make reparations. And let's say the reparations are actually that we're going to properly fund loss and damage from climate change because the same countries that grow cotton very often were the main victims of colonialism and slavery. And they are also the main victims of climate change today.

Who’s most affected?

Children and women working the soil and the fields. Often unpaid because they can't earn a proper living. Cotton farmers making so little money they can’t afford to properly pay the people who work the land is another inequality. That's also why children are not going to school because the farmers can't afford to pay proper labor and they have to help out in the fields. So most of the children follow the path of their parents. They are going to become farmers or farm workers.

Is cotton more of a social justice issue than an environmental justice issue?

It is both, it's been an environmental issue because of the overuse. And particularly in tropical climates pesticide poisoning is always going to be an issue. I always challenge people to go out there, try putting on the full protective kit with a backpack sprayer, and see how long you last at 45 degrees Celsius. Not for long! That's why even if farmers could afford to they don't wear protective equipment. The conditions are just wrong.

And so many brands romanticize hand-picking cotton in social media assets. We would not survive five minutes working in the heat. Let’s look at the environmental part of cotton. Do you think it’s fair to label cotton as environmentally harmful?