Organic cotton production lifts resettled and Quilombola communities out of poverty in Brazil, but there are challenges to keeping the trade sustainable in the long term.
Family farmers and quilombolas, with faces marked by sunburn after decades of working the land, smile at visitors arriving at the community farm in Ingá, in the rural area of Paraíba.
‘Celebrating the harvest today makes me emotional,’ says Seu Biu, the nickname of Severino Vicente da Silva, who led the revival of cotton production in the small community in 2021. ‘We lived in a difficult situation, surviving only on maize and beans, and we lost many friends who could no longer afford to stay here. We were forgotten.’
In all of Brazil, Paraíba has the fifth-highest percentage of people living in poverty, with 47.5 per cent of its population in poverty, compared to the national average of 27.5 per cent, according to data from Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE – Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).
Having worked the land since childhood and with most having dropped out of school to help their parents, the workers from 28 small farming families were happy to be the centre of attention for people from all over the country on September 16, 2024. This was the day they began harvesting organic cotton and held a celebration to mark the event. Three companies involved in textile manufacture and fashion came to the event and signed agreements to purchase the crop.
Guaranteed purchase contracts with textile and clothing companies ensure that farmers have a stable income and are protected from financial loss. Because of these agreements, they know that everything they plant will be sold at a predetermined price: R$17/kg (£2.30 sterling) for white cotton and R$19/kg (£2.60 sterling) for natural-coloured cotton.
‘This is more than 20 times what we used to get from middlemen, who took advantage of our lack of knowledge to buy our production for pennies,’ says farmer Marta Janete Silva Rego (70). ‘We had no support and no buyers. We used to sell the cotton just to buy food at the market. Now, we can negotiate the price,’ she explains.
As part of the project to revive organic cotton, companies like Dalila Têxtil, Cataguases, and Natural Cotton Color are willing to pay more than the average price for it (70 per cent more than the R$10/kg paid for conventional pesticide-dependent cotton) and to invest in machinery and technology for the farmers.
The investment in technology helps increase productivity and makes these companies’ fabrics and clothing acceptable in markets that demand environmentally responsible criteria. It also raises the added value of the final product and its access to more luxury markets. This year, for example, Natural Cotton Color took its clothes to Milan Fashion Week.
With guidance from government and development agencies, the farmers, who once used pesticides, now cultivate 80 hectares of 100 per cent organic cotton. Their farming follows an agroecological model, which integrates food crops to prevent pests. ‘We didn’t know it was possible to grow cotton without chemicals or that we needed to take care of the land and our own safety. It was only through training that we understood this,’ says Miriam Barbosa (50), who works the land with her husband, Geraldo.
Although not without its downsides, the project has given this community the security to return to cotton production after nearly 40 years of subsistence farming. Organic cotton, highly valued by Brazilian brands aiming for the international market, allows farmers to earn 70 to 90 per cent more than the price for conventionally grown, pesticide-dependent cotton.
From poverty to ‘never-seen-before profits’
Investment from companies in the textile sector has led to a rapid growth in both participation and productivity. The introduction of a large-scale cotton processing machine has had spectacular results, increasing productivity from 225 to 4,000 kilograms of processed cotton per hour and cutting the processing time from eight months to just 72 hours. Farmers now earn between R$10,000 (£1,367) and R$22,000 (£3,000) per harvest, significantly improving their economic stability in a country where the minimum wage is R$1,412 per month (£193).
‘In 2023, we harvested 42 tons. Everyone made some money and paid off their debts. I could finally expand my house and help strengthen our trade union. I also use my profits to lend a bit of money to those in need. This year, we lost all our maize because it didn’t rain enough, but we’ll survive thanks to cotton,’ explains Seu Biu, who once lived in a three-room house with his wife and eight children. Now, many of his children have their own houses and 4 of them are also farmers in Ingá.
Antônia Régis was the farmer who made the most profit in 2023. She symbolizes the strength of the 22 women responsible for production in Ingá. ‘When I was growing up, my house didn’t have electricity. Last year, I made more money than I had ever seen in my life. I paid off the loan I took out to plant, renovated my house, and paid debts that had been hanging over me for years,’ she says, smiling and showing off a blooming cotton flower.
Beyond Ingá
Ingá is just one of many areas in Paraíba where small farmers are leading the way in organic cotton production. Around 300 families in other towns, resettlements, and Quilombola communities rely on the same fixed price contract model. Among them, there are almost 50 families whose land was used for the construction of the Acauã Dam in Agreste da Paraiba in 2002. These farming families were resettled by the government on arable land which they are now producing organic cotton on.
Paraíba’s agroecological cotton accounts for nearly half of Brazil’s production. According to Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa – Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), the state planted around 700 hectares in 2023. This year a 50 per cent increase is expected.
Almost all of agroecological cotton in Brazil is produced by small-scale farmers, says Felipe Guimarães, technology transfer analyst at Embrapa Cotton. ‘These are producers with areas of 1 to 5 hectares who rely almost entirely on family labour.’ When it comes to conventional cotton, Brazil is one of the largest producers in the world and became the top exporter in July. However, the conventional method uses a high level of pesticides, making it one of the most polluting crops in the country.
In contrast, Paraíba’s cotton aims to achieve Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certification in October. This certification should guarantee access to new national and international markets, ‘with high added value’, says Francisca Vieira, president of the Associação Brasileira da Indústria de Moda Sustentável (Abrimos – Brazilian Association of the Sustainable Fashion Industry), and helps address one of the industry’s biggest challenges: long-term sustainability.
Three big struggles
The initiative faces challenges on three fronts. First, the farmers do not own the land they are working. Currently, they farm on land borrowed from a cattle rancher, but their time is limited. This puts their work and their income at risk. ‘We need time to do a proper sanitation clean break, but sometimes we can’t because the owner needs it to raise cattle’, says Marta. She explains that the land needs to be completely cleaned after the harvesting season, giving it a break from production to ensure that pests do not proliferate.
There is also the risk that the workers will become dependent on private companies as well as the public authorities who support them, such as local governments and agricultural development agencies from the Ministry of Agriculture. To become fully independent from public authorities and private companies, the farmers must become more competitive. If they increase their productivity and volume, they will be able to attract and diversify their business partners and make their work more financially sustainable in the long-run by reducing the price of their crop.
This leads onto the other issue: scale, which remains small compared to conventional cotton production. Due to its limited scale, organic cotton is still expensive for buyers. ‘We need to become more financially sustainable,’ explains André Klein, CEO of Dalila Textile, a textile company and one of Ingá’s cotton buyers. He speaks of a need to scale up and ‘increase production from 40 to 100 tons’. Time will tell if the two can effectively go hand-in-hand. But if not, where will this leave the farmers?
Thaís Matos is a Brazilian journalist currently pursuing an Erasmus Mundus Journalism Master’s degree at Aarhus University and City, University of London.