Policies and Practices: WWF’s Cotton Initiative
Growing cotton with less water and chemicals
WWF's Cotton Initiative aims to reduce the amount of water and chemicals used to grow cotton so that ecosystem health is sustained by adequate flows. Achieving this, would represent an important step towards making cotton production more sustainable.
WWF is working with farmers, government agencies, buyers and investors at key stages of the market chain - from the field to the clothes shop - in a joint endeavour to promote cotton that has less impact on the environment and which is ethically sound.Read more >> Cotton: a water wasting crop
Just 2.4 percent of the world’s arable land is planted with cotton yet cotton accounts for 24 percent of the world’s insecticide market and 11 percent of the sale of global pesticides. 73 percent of global cotton harvest comes from irrigated land.
Thirsty Crops: Our food and clothes: eating up nature and wearing out the environment? (WWF report)
Better farm practices in Pakistan
In Pakistan, WWF is working with partners on small-scale field projects to conserve irrigation water in cotton by promoting the 'bed and furrow' irrigation method.This is being done together with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques in order to reduce the use of toxic pesticides.
Farmer Field Schools have been established in South Punjab to undertake these activities in collaboration with the Punjab Agriculture Department and international partners such as CABI-Bioscience.
Initial results show that using these practices farmers can maintain or increase their output while reducing their water use by 40% and suffering a lower intensity of pest attacks.
