06-03-2025
Cotton Maintains ‘Incredible Secrecy' About Synthetic Pesticide Use, Report Says
Despite imbuing the 'fabric of our lives,' as the Cotton Incorporated jingle goes, there's still plenty we don't know about the world's second-most popular fiber after polyester. That includes the precise makeup of the synthetic pesticides and fertilizers that boost its growth, according to pro-organic organizations, which have despaired of what they call a 'glaring lack of transparency' regarding the names and quantities of these chemical inputs in all countries save the United States.
The problem is thrown into greater relief with the mounting popularity of regenerative agriculture, which is far more permissive of synthetic chemical use than, say, certified-organic, even though the idea is for farmers to eventually phase these out as they work to restore soil health and improve biodiversity in a less regimented and more expedient way.
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'So many people like talking about regenerative agriculture and things like that, but they don't want to address the details,' said Sandra Marquardt, president of sustainable fiber consultancy On the Mark and co-author of a report by The Organic Center, a nonprofit research group whose work on the issue was financed, in part, by Naturepedic, a manufacturer of organic mattresses and bedding.
'Everybody's doing regenerative, but no one is saying, 'What does regenerative mean when it comes to the use of pesticides and fertilizers?'' she added. 'There's been a real—and important—focus on soil building carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions, but with no details. And my biggest concern is that yet another term becomes greenwashed.'
According to Marquardt's research, the United States is 'literally' the only country that tracks this information and makes it public at no cost, although she also cast some doubt on whether this will remain the case with the Trump administration's propensity for downplaying or suppressing scientific research. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has conducted surveys on cotton every two years from 2015 to 2021, with the most recent covering nine states making up 92 percent of the 11.1 million acres planted that year. The next census is due in 2025.
According to the 2021 results, roughly 42 million pounds of chemical pesticides were applied to help 10.3 million acres of cotton thrive. This gives conventional cotton the dubious honor of having the most intensive pesticide use per land unit of the nine field crops surveyed by the agency over the past five years, surpassing even corn, soybeans and wheat.
While only 10 synthetic chemicals comprised 86 percent of all pesticides reportedly used, at least 98 different types were deployed, including some that contain the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS or 'forever chemicals.' Even among the top 10, however, several have been flagged by the United Nations and others as highly hazardous, presenting acute or chronic threats to human health or the environment.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in weed killers such as Monsanto's RoundUp, accounted for 30 percent of all pesticides used in U.S. cotton. Its effect on those exposed is subject to intense scientific debate. Though the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies glyphosate as 'probably carcinogenic to humans,' and some studies have indicated that it can increase the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by as much as 41 percent, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that it 'is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.'
Other countries, such as Brazil, which leapfrogged the United States to become the No. 1 user of synthetic pesticides between 2018 and 2022, and China, India and South Africa, which claimed the third, fourth and fifth spots during that period, respectively, have been less forthcoming about the potentially toxic chemicals they use, Marquardt said. Even the relatively progressive European Union, she noted, keeps the data it gathers from member nations every five years under lock and key. And while the International Cotton Advisory Committee, or ICAC, has taken to providing overviews of global pesticide use for public perusal, it usually omits specific information involving names and amounts.
There's an 'incredible secrecy that surrounds pesticide use,' she said. 'But if we want to reduce pesticide use, we need to know how to target those products and provide information to brands, governments and researchers.'
Marquardt said that she's grateful the United States has been tracking and publishing this data so far, but she's also concerned that the Trump administration, which is supposed to release the results of its survey in 2026, could take the information down. There has already been a purge of all mentions of climate change from federal websites. Last month, a group of farmers and environmental nonprofits sued the USDA for erasing data, guides and resources that they say will hurt farmers who rely on them to make agricultural decisions and apply for funding. This is one of the reasons Marquardt wants to sound the alarm about the issue now.
Not everyone agrees with the report's framing. Jesse Daystar, chief sustainability officer for Cotton Incorporated, said that The Organic Center fails to acknowledge that organic cotton often lacks robust, year-over-year impact data, unlike many other cotton programs. Its report, he said, uses U.S. cotton pesticide data to contrast organic cotton more favorably against conventional cotton, creating a 'biased narrative designed to promote organic cotton without applying the same level of scrutiny.' If data is used to penalize growers rather than support improvements, he added, it disincentivizes others from supplying similar information.
Others, such as Better Cotton, the world's largest sustainable cotton program, saw Marquardt's point. Many cotton-producing countries lack standardized reporting systems that are integral to enabling comprehensive data collection, a spokesperson said, and it will ultimately take 'collaboration and systems change to raise the standard' of publishing data on chemicals used in cotton production at a global scale.
Textile Exchange, the sustainability-focused multi-stakeholder group where Marquardt served a senior manager of fiber crops for nearly six years, said it recognizes a 'real lack' of publicly available data on pesticide usage and types, especially outside of the United States. 'We support the call for improved reporting so we can accurately measure impacts of cotton production and monitor progress towards phasing out synthetic fertilizers and pesticides,' said Debra Guo, its cotton and crops lead.
For Marquardt, keeping information about the billions of pounds of potentially toxic inputs being used to grow cotton in a black box not only undermines discussions of sustainability but it also represents a wasted opportunity.
'Had Rachel Carson not looked at DDT, we'd still be using it, you know,' she said. 'And there are problems with all of these pesticides that they're using. Of the top 10 pesticides, seven of them are considered hazardous. This is a concern to workers in the field, to the environment. They are designed to kill. And we need to know what's in them before we spread them willy-nilly across the land. We need to have parameters so that people are playing with the same deck of cards.'
