Sustainable Cotton Project Farm Tour
On October 19, 2012, CUESA staff attended a one-day Cotton Farm Tour in the San Joaquin Valley organized by the Sustainable Cotton Project (SCP).
Sustainable Cotton Project (SCP) is a California-based nonprofit that works with farms to increase environmental and agricultural sustainability in the Central Valley. Tour attendees met cotton farmers, saw cotton being harvested, toured a running cotton gin, and learned about the SCP’s Cleaner Cotton™ fiber program.
Our first stop was to visit cotton farmers Frank Williams and Mark Fickett of Windfall Farms, who have been working together since 1985. Their farm is enrolled in SCP’s Cleaner Cotton™ field program, through which growers reduce chemical use by using Integrated Pest Management practices as a first line of defense against pests.
Permanent hedgerows are one strategy for decreasing chemical use on the cotton farm. Not only do they enhance biodiversity by providing habitat and food for beneficial insects, but they also offer weed control and protection against soil erosion. Other ways to increase biodiversity include uncropped areas, cover crops or filter strips, and annual habitat strips.
Frank and Mark attempted certified organic cotton production, but with mixed results. They had a couple of successful crops but one failure, and finding buyers was difficult. Growing cotton organically can be risky because cotton is one of the most pesticide-dependent crops in the world and requires a high amount of hand-weeding. The farmers have found a good middle ground with the SCP program, which bans GMOs and the 13 most toxic chemicals used on cotton, and supports farmers in using biological controls for common crop problems.
SCP field scout Luis Gallegos showed tour attendees his sweep net technique used for pest monitoring. He “sweeps” a field 50 times in three different areas each day and reports back to the grower about the number of pests and beneficial insects he catches. Lygus bugs, aphids, and mites are major threats to cotton fields. One method growers use to reduce chemical usage is growing alfalfa to act as a trap crop for pests. Methods like these have helped SCP growers reduce pesticide use by 72% compared to conventional growers.
Tour attendees saw two kinds of cotton: San Joaquin Valley Acala and American Pima. Acala is high quality and is used in fine knit and bath towels. Pima is the highest quality cotton grown in the U.S., often compared to fine Egyptian cotton. The cotton plant produces squares, or buds, which then turn into blossoms. The blossoms develop into bolls that eventually open to expose fresh cotton.
In addition to standard white cotton, Windfall Farms grows brown, red, and green cotton. The farmers note that the darker colored cottons produce a worse fiber in terms of length and strength, so they take care not to contaminate the white cotton.
While producing a shorter fiber, colored cottons are an opportunity to create fiber products that have a natural color. No petroleum dyes are needed!
At our second stop, we learned about water use from Dan Munk, a UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor. Cotton needs about 28 to 30 inches of water a year to yield a decent crop, and the Central Valley gets between 6 and 7 inches. Even less than that gets absorbed into the field, due to evaporation.
The SCP field we visited used drip tape buried about 15 inches deep and set accurately with GPS. The water mainly comes from deep wells and from the Delta and Northern California. Cotton is harvested when the leaves have 12% or less moisture.
Weeds are also a problem for cotton farmers. A pre-emergent herbicide is typically sprayed before planting. Later, light tillage on top of the beds disturbs the weeds to keep growth in check. In organic cotton production, the amount of hand-labor needed to weed the fields can be prohibitive. About 80% of the world’s organic cotton crop is from India due to readily available labor and smaller farm sizes. (The cotton flower pictured is less likely to grow if weeds are out of control.)
At our next stop, we watched a cotton picker harvest cotton. After harvest, the cotton is dumped into a module builder that compresses it into rectangular modules. The field belongs to Gary and Mari Martin and is enrolled in SCP’s program.
Each module is made up of 13 to 17 bales, and a bale weighs in at around 500 pounds.
Our last stop of the day was Silver Creek Gin. The cotton gin’s job is to separate the fiber and seed, condition the fiber, and then remove the leaves and dirt.
This facility has two kinds of cotton gins: a roller gin and a saw gin. The saw gin uses 158 circular saws on a spindle to cut the lint from the seed. The roller gin uses a stationary knife and a rotary knife; the seed is pulled through the knives, separating it from the lint and leaving a longer fiber than the saw gin.
The clean cotton is formed into a mat that is fed into a press. This creates a 500 pound bale, which is bagged and tagged in order to assure the cotton can be traced from the field to the spinner.
This bar code goes on every bale of cotton harvested in the United States and onto a sample of fiber taken from each bale. The sample goes to the USDA for quality testing. This means that the spinner knows the length, strength, color, and thickness of the fiber in every bale and every bale is traceable back to the farmer and the field where it was grown. This is the same tracking system that ensures the cotton fiber in the Cleaner Cotton™ program comes from a Cleaner Cotton™ field.
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CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture) is dedicated to cultivating a sustainable food system through the operation of farmers markets and educational programs. Learn More »