I have to say, it is unusual for me to listen to a podcast episode and immediately think that not only do I need to tweet out the link, but I need to go the extra mile and write a blog post. In fact, I can’t think of one but Saturday morning Twitter delivered me something unusual and I want to share it with the folks who subscribe to the blog.

As I hopped online, I checked the “in case you missed it” tweets and something from fellow cotton lover Jess Lehmann jumped out. It was this tweet:

My mentor Dr Robert Mensah his research journey & I’m proud to have helped along the way#Biological #Cotton #SeroX https://t.co/MxMEBcT6an pic.twitter.com/VRRFMKfPWo

— Jess Lehmann (@lehmann_jess) July 15, 2017

Having a shared love of the natural fiber, immediately made me think I should check this out. Besides, I’m always up for learning about Australian cotton, new research on the crop and I wasn’t familiar with Dr. Mensah.

I love that Dr. Mensah talks about growing up in Ghana. The section talking about his father’s role as witch doctor — not a cartoon version you may see on TV but a protector and medicine man for his village — is so compelling!

So, by the time he talks about how he talks about how he pairs his father’s bush skills with the advanced science he has studied…. And how that is helping him narrow down some of the traits in the field to test for….. well, I can only imagine how incredible it is to work in the field with him!

You should be absolutely ready to listen to this episode now so get your headphones on or hit that speaker button once you hit play. I’d love to hear your thoughts too!

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The post Son of a Witch Doctor Pairs Dad’s Skills with Science for Cotton appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I’ve been asked several times how I could work for a company that cares so little for life that we turn a blind eye to the plight of Indian cotton farmers due to Indian suicides. Some people have heard that farmers there are committing suicide because of the biotech seeds we sell. I’ve had long conversations trying to explain the complicated cultural phenomenon that is at fault and illustrate clearly it is not the seeds we sell. I also have personal connections in India who have made it possible for me to see things for myself, to ask people questions. This blog post on Discover Magazine does a clear job of discussing the topic of Indian farmers committing suicide and the reality is complex:

Ironically, the documentary (Bitter Seeds) that perpetuates the GMO/Indian farmer suicide myth also indirectly captures those complex factors. I was actually quite moved by the film, which showed a side of the story that indicts Indian cultural mores and predatory lending practices way more than it indicts Monsanto. This is a side of the story that the Vandana Shiva’s of the world choose to ignore. But don’t take my word for it; watch the movie for yourself.

The truth is that the real causes of farmer suicides in India cannot be pinned on Monsanto, however venal you may regard the company. To discuss those causes you have to wade into a very complex equation that includes institutional, social, and governmental factors in India.  Doing this requires a cold objective eye and cultural sensitivity. I’m fairly certain that Vandana Shiva, in her heart,  knows well why so many Indian farmers have taken their lives over the last several decades. Just as I’m sure that she knows all about India’s high rate of suicide and the reasons for it. After all, she is a student of inequality and social justice. That Shiva prefers to keep the conversation squarely and inaccurately focused on GMOs and Monsanto reveals to me that she cares more about advancing an ideological agenda than addressing the root causes of suicide in India. That she has succeeded in exploiting real tragedy and distracting conversation away from those true causes is something I find utterly offensive.

via The Real Seeds of Deception : Collide-a-Scape.

Please read the entire article. Reality is the vast majority of Indian farmers have to work their fingers to the bone, they live in tough conditions without nice things like sharp shovels much less tractors. I want to help them improve their lives, make it possible to send daughters to school, have clean water available to them (many carry water for miles to get it to their homes) and to produce enough of a crop that they can sell it fairly.

Indian cotton farmer irrigating

I was lucky enough to visit India several years ago for work and while there I took some vacation time to visit my friend Geeta’s village and several other places. Seeing what the vast majority of of the Indian public deals with on a daily basis was hard. You see women and children doing heavy labor — picking cotton would be seen as light work compared to the people hauling bricks. You see people using animal dung as a heating source, even for cooking. You see people begging on the streets in ways that make you realize Slumdog Millionaire was probably all too accurate in portraying. Below are some of my trip photos that show you what I mean.

When you live in a world where people complain because the restaurant we are at doesn’t have the exact soda we like, it’s hard to imagine the challenges Indian farmers can face. I have to make myself remember and I have to keep talking to people who can help me see the difficulties in Africa and other world areas. And it’s nearly impossible to understand that a technology that offers a way to limit exposure to insecticides is more than a way to make the job easier, it has the potential for changing your health for the better as you and your kids are no longer breathing in insecticides as you walk the field.

I can see how its easy for people to be vulnerable to stories that sound like an injustice is being done. And injustice should bring outrage. But sometimes what we read on the internet is just a story and the storyteller may have a different agenda than they admit to, like Keith found while at the Botanical Garden.

This brings me to a point I really need to make….

Before you believe the things that are said on the internet, do some research. That can be said of this article as well as the ones that make the other claims. Look at the sources you normally agree with and some of the ones you may not, look for people or groups who may be experts on a topic who aren’t out on book tours, who may just be trying to make a positive difference. There are a lot of people on the internet who use fear as a motivator in others and they manipulate facts. There are also a lot of people who would like to have the truth heard…. they just don’t

I’m okay answering questions about these things as long as people are okay thinking through various information, some of which may not be in line with other things you’ve heard. Use those critical thinking skills we used to cultivate so much as kids and question folks who make big statements about things you are unfamiliar with…. if they really want people to understand what’s happening in the world around them, they will be fine taking time to answer your questions.

Ellen at OneHundredMeals.com also wrote a blog post about an encounter she had with Vandana Shiva. I have never met or heard SHiva speak personally, but have seen video that I felt was incredibly mileading and done so for her own reasons other than honesty.

(Feel like I should remind you about the disclaimer at the bottom of this page. These are my thoughts, not thoughts I am paid to articulate. Now back to work I go.)

Related articles

• The myth of India’s ‘GM genocide’: Genetically modified cotton blamed for wave of farmer suicides

The post Breeding Bitter Seeds of Deception That Hurts Indian Cotton Farmers appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Tonight I was asked to answer a question about cotton on Quora and I decided to go ahead and post my reply here on the blog too since I had already taken the time to write it all up.   The question was “How is cotton picked nowadays?” The answer I gave them follows with a few minor modifications.

There are a few ways that cotton is currently harvested.

In the US the two predominant ways to harvest cotton on farms is either using 1) mechanical cotton pickers or 2) using a mechanical cotton stripper. A cotton picker pulling the lint from the plants bracts that hold it on and leaves the rest of the plant as is. This is what is used in the Southeast, Mid-South and Far West (CA & AZ). Some areas of Texas and Oklahoma use pickers but on the High Plains (Lubbock & Amarillo, Texas are two of the bigger cities in that area) cotton strippers are commonly used. Strippers pull more of the plant into the equipment which means there will be additional cleaning or ginning needed. Its interesting to note that within the cotton picker segment there are some differences in machinery and labor requirements. The latest state of the art pickers include the ability to compact cotton on-board, pressing it into a module as it rolls through the field. These pickers can pick six rows of cotton at a time and are rapidly becoming the market standard in the US as they eliminate the need to a separate module builder and other equipment and people to run those. Most of the more developed or advanced agricultural systems in cotton producing nations use pickers so its similar in Australia and Brazil.

There are a few photos & videos of cotton harvest on my blog if you’d like to take a look.

• a bit of recollection from a friend who drove a one row cotton picker in the 1970s as well as a video of one of the new on-board moduling pickers that produces rectangular modules.
• another current day picker running through the field and shows you what the round modules look like.
• shows you what I mean by moduling that’s needed with pickers that do not have the on-board moduling system and shows how those modules are transported.

Hand-harvesting is still the standard in many other countries and you can see that done in many areas of Turkey, India, China, Africa, etc. In these places, the people who harvest are still picking cotton the way it was done in the US many decades ago. Usually people are paid per pound or kilo of cotton harvested. Cotton in these countries may be brought to the gin in trucks, still in bags or in wagons pulled by tractors. (The photo at right is from a trip I took to Turkey and ended up visiting farms during my vacation.)

I can also tell you that I have picked cotton in the very recent past here in the US but that was part of research efforts where researchers pick individual plants or even selected bolls for testing and breeding purposes.

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I have a lot of posts in a Cotton 101 series as well as even more tagged as cotton. Feel free to add topics to my blogging list! I sometimes wonder what others would like to know about my favorite fiber crop!

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