Do We Grow Too Much Cotton?

Pamela Ravasio:

More land was converted to crop land in the 30 years after 1950 than in the 150 years between 1700 and 1850. The trend increased even further between 1995 and 2005, and the portion of farmed land grew from 5% to 25%. Intensive agricultural systems now covers one quarter of the planet's land surface, a fifth of what used to be wild a decade ago. A further 25% of surface area is covered by cities, railways, factories or mines.

Of a world crop production of 2748.2 million tonnes (2011), only 4% was cotton, the most popular of fibre crops. However the picture manifests itself very differently if land usage is the measure to go by: the plantations of the three largest cotton growers - the US, China and India - alone account for 50 million acres, 42% of all agricultural land. In contrast, food crops amount to some 40 million acres and fuel crops to 32 million acres.

In other words: It is the 'white gold', cotton, not fuel, that is in direct competition with food.

In the recent past, floods in Pakistan, India and Australia caused significant loss of cotton as well as food crops, triggering the 2011 spike in both commodity's prices. This development was exacerbated by the global demand for biofuel crops. While the loss of cotton harvests manifested itself through peaks in prices, the concurrent peak in food commodity prices triggered severe food supply scarcity, and malnourishment, in net importing countries.

I guess corn isn't counted as a food crop in this story, since the U.S. is expected to plant 95 million acres of corn this year.  I'll take a different angle on this.  In our country, we waste too much land growing lawns and paving parking lots.  If every suburban family had a quarter of the yard they have, and they lived in walkable communities, we'd probably not have as much obesity as we do, and people could spend more time tending a garden, and less time mowing the grass.