Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Cotton ( Gossypium ), Algodon

The earliest production of cotton discovered so far  occurred in Mexico, 7500-8,000 years ago. The indigenous species was Gossypium hirsutum, which is now the most widely planted species of cotton in the world, constituting about 89.9% of all production worldwide.
The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, also in Australia and Africa. Cotton was first cultivated in the Old World 7,000 years ago (5th millennium BC-4th millennium BC), by the inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization, a civilization that covered a huge swath of the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising today parts of eastern Pakistan and northwestern India.

 Cotton is grown in 66 countries commercially, and the grand total  in 2009 was 100 150 000 bales, each weighing 480 pounds. Your share  would be  6. 991 pounds , or  3.146kg  of cotton per year.  To give you an idea, of what can be made  from this cotton--  3 pairs of jeans,  11 men's dress shirts, 30 boxer  shorts, or, if its more to your liking,  $457 000 in 100-dollar bills.  That's right , we could make that much money for every Earthling with our cotton, what it would be able to buy is a different question.


If we could make a giant cube out  of this (compressed, baled) cotton , it would be  363. 6 meters tall.
 Current value (October 2010)  is around  $1- 1.05 per pound,  worlds crop  costs 50.5 billion  US dollars.


There are 18 600   farms that plant some cotton in US, and each is getting $230 per acre (0.4 ha)  for doing so (courtesy of US taxpayers)
With 10.3 million acres sown in US, it costs  well over   $2 billion to  lower the world price of cotton, which is surely appreciated by the biggest cotton importer, China (10.9 million bales in 2009, more than the rest of the World combined). This figure was as high as $3.3 billion in 2005.

 Cotton demands as much as 2.6% of  an entire world's water use. A ton of cotton  requires 3644 tons of water. 1 bale, needs  787 tons of water, 1 pair of jeans--almost 1000 gallons, a $1 bill-- over 2.5 liters each
more on the topic here :http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report18.pdf

Land usage:  433 000  sq. kilometers or 43.3 million hectares  ( 108.25 million acres), which is 2.75% of all arable land in the world. It is an area very slightly smaller than Iraq, or slightly bigger than California.

16% of all world's pesticides , and 25% of all world's insecticides are used to prop all that fiber up.
Aldicarb, cotton's second best selling insecticide and most acutely poisonous to humans, can kill a man with just one drop absorbed through the skin, yet it is still used in 25 countries and the US, where 16 states have reported it in their groundwater.  Bon appetit!

Major producer is China, with 32 million bales, major producer per capita is  Turkmenistan, with about 117.4 pounds  of cotton  produced per person in 2009. About 550 000 hectares are used for cotton there, which is about 30% of all arable land there.

 Production stats,  480-pound bales, 2009 :
Production Ranking MY 2009(000) 480-pound bales
Country Beginning Stocks Production Imports Total Supply Mill Use Exports Ending Stocks SUR*
China, Peoples Republic of 22,366 32,000 10,903 65,269 49,000 23 18,246 37.22%
India 8,919 23,200 600 32,719 19,500 6,550 6,669 25.60%
United States 6,337 12,188 0 18,525 3,461 12,037 2,947 19.02%
Pakistan 3,458 9,600 1,400 14,458 11,000 700 2,733 23.36%
Brazil 4,992 5,350 151 10,493 4,400 1,990 4,253 66.56%
Uzbekistan, Republic of 1,948 3,900 0 5,848 1,100 3,800 948 19.35%
Australia 929 1,775 0 2,704 40 2,115 624 28.96%
Turkey 1,654 1,750 4,394 7,798 5,800 150 1,928 32.40%
Turkmenistan 844 1,250 0 2,094 440 1,075 579 38.22%
Syria 204 1,000 0 1,204 825 200 179 17.46%
Greece 461 900 20 1,381 175 875 281 26.76%
Argentina 641 830 77 1,548 775 53 711 85.87%
Burkina 248 700 0 948 4 775 169 21.69%
Zimbabwe 246 500 0 746 90 425 216 41.94%
Tanzania, United Republic of 440 450 0 890 170 325 395 79.80%
Nigeria 164 450 50 664 300 225 139 26.48%
Mali 117 440 0 557 25 440 92 19.78%
Egypt 451 432 550 1,433 850 325 245 20.85%
Mexico 764 422 1,393 2,579 1,900 75 579 29.32%
Tajikistan, Republic of 296 375 0 671 40 450 181 36.94%
Benin 108 350 0 458 10 375 73 18.96%
Kazakhstan, Republic of 132 350 3 485 55 337 93 23.72%
Cote d'Ivoire 105 325 0 430 45 300 85 24.64%
Iran 165 300 325 790 600 25 165 26.40%
Burma 56 270 0 326 200 75 51 18.55%
Cameroon 50 225 0 275 40 195 40 17.02%
Zambia 155 150 0 305 80 100 125 69.44%
Colombia 106 138 240 484 390 5 84 21.27%
Peru 220 130 315 665 435 6 224 50.79%
Mozambique 68 125 0 193 10 120 63 48.46%
Spain 16 110 10 136 40 70 26 23.64%


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