Biodynamic Organic Cotton Linens and Towels
With the introduction of Bt cotton, Monsanto promised cotton farmers that they would be able to use less pesticides and their yields and income would increase.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. With Bt cotton, secondary pests have emerged, forcing farmers to use much greater amounts of costly pesticides — as much as 13 times more.
And now the price of cotton seed continues to rise, and farmers are no longer able to buy seed that isn’t genetically engineered. Bt cotton seed costs 4 to 10 times more than conventional hybrid seed, and farmers are forced to buy new seed every year.
That’s not all… Increasingly, farmers began losing livestock to illness and death after they grazed in Bt cotton fields, which contributed to a decline in milk production. Other serious reproductive failures surfaced, and workers began to fall ill.
Many cotton farmers have gone into serious debt from loans they were forced to take on. Nearly 400,000 farmers – many of them cotton farmers – have committed suicide between 1995 and 2018, translating into 48 farmer suicides every day in India.
