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From farm field to cotton mill: The making of America's denim
Wayne Drash, CNN
Christopher Wolfe has a Tough As Nails, I Love America attitude. His pride swells along with his tattooed biceps. He's a dying breed, a blue-collar American working on a product as American as apple pie.

Blue jeans.

"This is our lifeline," Wolfe says.

Those jeans you squeezed into this morning? It's likely they began right here at Mount Vernon Mills, one of the last functioning cotton mills in America and the nation's No. 1 producer of denim.

In a tiny enclave of northwest Georgia, Wolfe and 1,200 of his colleagues churn out enough denim per week for 800,000 pairs of blue jeans.

Most U.S. mills shut down years ago, unable to compete with cheap overseas labor. And in another sign of the global economy, the fabric woven here is rarely sent to American plants to be turned into jeans. Instead, the fabric is shipped mostly to factories in Mexico. The jeans then carry labels that read "Made in Mexico of U.S. fabric."

Blame NAFTA. Blame outsourcing. Blame corporate greed for the selling out of America's manufacturing soul.

"I'd rather see people over here work, instead of struggling -- instead of giving somebody in another country a chance to make money that [Americans] should be making," says Wolfe, 31...
(30 Oct 2009)

Can China Turn Cotton Green?
Chris Wood, Miller-McCune
That "all-natural" cotton T-shirt in your closet? The one with the eco-friendly message brightly printed on the front? Ounce for ounce, it could be the most environmentally toxic item of clothing you own. From the water and agrichemicals lavished on cotton grown in some of the world's driest regions (approximately one-third of the pesticide and fertilizer produced worldwide gets sprayed or dusted on cotton), through multihued rivers of waste streaming from textile mills to landfills bulging with castoff clothing, the life cycle of the humble cotton tee has left ecological wreckage in its wake.

As both the world's leading producer and biggest importer of raw cotton and its top exporter of cotton fabrics and apparel, China has experienced much of the damage. The expansion of industrial-scale cotton farming in the arid western Xinjiang province has been linked to the advance of the vast Taklamakan Desert, whose dunes have swallowed entire towns. In China's industrial heartland, untreated dye wastes stain drainage ditches in vibrant synthetic hues, contributing to pollution that renders most Chinese rivers undrinkable and a few even dangerously toxic to the touch. So when China's leaders sought advice from international researchers on how to reduce the ecological cost of their country's trade, it was natural for cotton to be put atop the list for scrutiny.

And perhaps it was no less inevitable that scrutiny would extend to America and other major cotton producers, shedding light on how divergent political and economic cultures can hinder the achievement of greener trade — even when the country at the center of that trade is focused sharply on sustainability....
(14 Dec 2009)

Pastoralism Unraveling in Mongolia
Sarah J. Wachter, The New York Times
A pungent odor like turpentine wafts over the hillsides north of the Mongolian capital. It comes from the sharilj, a wild plant that has taken over the scalloped landscape, a telltale sign of overgrazing since the plant is inedible for sheep and goats.

Sukhtseren Sharav has a herd of 150 goats and 100 sheep, and as they chew their way through everything else, and the sharilj spreads, he must shepherd them ever higher into the mountains to find fresh grazing land.

The lack of foraging terrain is not Mr. Sharav’s only worry. The price for cashmere, the wool made from the fleece of his goats, has plunged 50 percent from last year. The price of flour, his most essential food staple, has more doubled.

These are hard times for Mongolia’s cashmere industry, which provides jobs and income for a third of the country’s population of 2.6 million and supplies about 20 percent of the world’s market for the fluffy, feather-light fiber, prized for its warmth, delicate feel and long wear.

To compensate for low prices, herders have been increasing supply by breeding more goats — a classic vicious circle. Mongolia’s goat population is now approaching 20 million, the highest ever recorded....
(8 Dec 2009)