Organic cotton represents a tiny sliver of the world cotton market -- less than 1 percent, according to estimates -- but it is growing.

And with several major brands and retailers pledging to use organic blends in some product lines, organic cotton could become the fiber of choice for many consumers.

That has put the traditional cotton industry, which relies heavily on chemical inputs, on the defensive.

To counter the perception that organic is better for consumers and the environment, the Cordova-based National Cotton Council of America has joined with Cotton Inc. and other major agribusiness and farm commodity groups to come up with a definition of "sustainable" that they hope will become part of U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations much as a definition of "organic" did nearly a decade ago.

Even though the definition has not been completed, William Norman, vice president of technical services for the NCC, said "sustainable" will most assuredly not be synonymous with "organic."

"There are conventional production systems that are more sustainable than some organic production systems, and there are some organic production systems that are more sustainable than some conventional production systems," Norman said.

Or, as Janet Reed, associate director of environmental research for Cotton Inc., argues, chemical herbicides and pesticides and synthetic fertilizer can be part of sustainable agriculture.

"They help growers get higher yields using less land, less water, less fertilizer and less energy, while losing less soil," she said.

The Denver-based Keystone Center takes credit for bringing the two cotton groups together with Monsanto, The Fertilizer Institute, the National Association of Conservation Districts and more than 30 other organizations to write a technical definition for sustainable.

"We were aware that 'sustainable' and 'sustainable agriculture' were terms that were growing in popularity, but were not well mapped out," said Julie Shapiro, associate at the Keystone Center. She has been involved in facilitating, managing and coordinating the project that came to be called Field to Market: The Keystone Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture.

The organizations that came together, she said, agreed that sustainability would be defined by a focus on outcomes instead of on practices.

The first swing at a definition, which came out last year, incorporated national trends in land use, water use, energy use, soil loss and greenhouse gas emissions per cotton bale. Pesticides, for example, were evaluated in terms of how much energy it took to manufacture and apply them.

Proponents of organic agriculture criticize the definition for leaving out too many things, such as the toxicity of pesticides to human beings and beneficial wildlife.

Shapiro said the agribusiness alliance is seeking to refine the definition by including measurements of water quality, biodiversity, the socioeconomic health of farmers, and the health of ecosystem credit markets such as proposed carbon trading markets. They will not, however, deal with the transfer of genetic traits from genetically modified organisms, she said.

"We are not trying to pass judgment on what is actually sustainable, but rather point to what progress has been made and work off of that to build up a system that supports continuous improvement," she said.

Ready to grow

Ask people at the National Cotton Council whether they worry about competition from organic cotton and they say no. It's a specialized niche, just a sliver of the current market, they say.

At the same time, they are aware of how quickly the organic food market grew in the last decade and the steps the organic side of the cotton industry has taken to position organic cotton on the same trajectory.

According to the Organic Trade Association, sale of organic foods in the U.S. jumped from $6.1 billion and 1 percent of the total food market in 2000 to $24.8 billion and nearly 4 percent of the food market in 2009. Most organic food is now sold by mainstream retailers, and according to a consumer survey commissioned by OTA last year, nearly three-quarters of American households now sometimes buy organic products.

Organic products also weathered the recession better than did nonorganic products, with sales of organic food growing three times as fast as total food sales in 2009.

Although still tiny, sales of organic fibers, mostly cotton, also grew rapidly in the U.S., climbing from $69 million in 2002 to $521 million in 2009. In contrast to the 10 percent increase in sales of organic bedding and clothing in 2009, sales of nonorganics fell by 1 percent.

More important for future growth, organic businesses have been busy establishing an entire supply chain, including major brands and major retailers, committed to expanding markets for organic cotton products worldwide.

Nike, Nordstrom, Esquesl Apparel, Patagonia, Disney, Eileen Fisher, The Gap, L.L. Bean, Target and dozens of other companies have committed to using organic cotton in at least some of their products, said Heather Hocker, marketing director for the Organic Exchange, a nonprofit organization that promotes the cultivation and use of organic cotton.

In the last two years alone, world production of organic cotton more than tripled, from 265,517 bales in 2007 to 802,599 bales in 2009, Hocker said.

More than 2,800 companies in 55 countries around the world have become certified to the Global Organic Textile Standard, said Sandra Marquardt, the Organic Trade Association's spokeswoman on cotton and former head of the group's fiber council. The voluntary standard was approved by organic trade associations in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. in 2006.

While getting its supply chain in order, the organic side of the cotton industry has attracted the support of top fashion designers to make organic cotton chic. "Green" fashion has grabbed the spotlight at New York fashion shows, with high-fashion designers such as Stella McCarthy, Richie Rich, Linda Loudermilk, Calvin Klein, Versace and others introducing designs made with organic fibers.

In short, organic businesses have built a machine to boost demand for products made from organic cotton and make them part of the mass market, and they're getting results.

Walmart and Target have launched lines of organic clothing, and Payless Shoes is introducing a line of shoes this month made from organic materials.

"Even during the down economy we saw companies in the apparel sector strengthening their commitment to organic fibers. That is revolutionary. It is so exciting to see these changes during my lifetime," Marquardt said.

Though exciting for Marquardt, it may be bad news for Mid-South cotton growers.

Effects on the region

There are no more than 60 growers of organic cotton in the U.S. -- and none in the Mid-South, said LaRhea Pepper, senior director of the Organic Exchange. Of that number, 40 are in West Texas and the others are in New Mexico, Arizona and California.

"We have two things in our favor in West Texas," Pepper said. "We're on the High Plains and we get a hard freeze, which defoliates the cotton so we can harvest it without using a defoliant. The hard freeze also keeps the insects down," she said.

Conventional growers use a defoliant to knock the leaves off the plants so that machines can harvest the cotton; they also plant genetically modified seeds and rely on herbicides and pesticides.

Organic farmers can't use those tools, and because they can't rely on a hard freeze, growers of organic cotton here would see less production per acre and likelier higher costs than growers in, say, West Texas.

But cultivating organic cotton in the Mid-South, Pepper is quick to point out, wouldn't be impossible.

Just ask Steve McKaskle, a farmer in Braggadocio, Mo., a legend in organic farming and trade organizations. Delta Enterprise Network executive director Jim Worstell once described him as "the most innovative cotton grower in the world." McKaskle grew organic cotton for 15 years until a 2006 tornado wiped out his family's cotton gin and destroyed all of his cotton equipment.

McKaskle said that cotton is more difficult to grow with organic methods than either corn or rice because "cotton grows slowly and weeds grow fast." In contrast, corn grows faster than weeds and when rice gets to be 4 inches tall "you flood the field with water and that kills most of the weeds."

McKaskle almost single-handedly developed techniques to make it less difficult to grow organic cotton in the Mid-South. He used citric acid, for example, to defoliate the plants for harvesting. He rotated cotton with corn and beans and fertilized with chicken manure and gin trash -- the hulls, stems and other nitrogen-rich parts of cotton left over from the process of separating the fiber from seed.

He used an array of techniques to limit insect damage: "stale bed" planting, a form of no-till in which cotton seeds are planted beneath the cover of dead vegetation; boll weevil traps; spraying sugar on the plants to make them more resistant to insect damage; and releasing predatory insects to hunt down problem insects.

McKaskle's biggest problem, he said, was weeds. He used corn gluten meal as a pre-emergent herbicide and flame cultivation -- burning weeds with propane torches -- to eradicate morning glory and broadleaf weeds. He was working with researchers at the University of Missouri, he said, to develop a liquid version of the gluten product when the grant funding their research was cut off in the wake of 9/11.

McKaskle said the chief problem with organic cultivation in the Mid-South is not the climate -- it's the lack of money available to develop processes and techniques that would help large commercial organic farmers. That includes seeds. Modern, high-yield seeds all have been genetically modified for herbicide resistance or insecticide production, meaning that organic growers are forced to use old-fashioned lower-yielding seeds, he said.

Regardless, the U.S. is the high-cost producer of organic cotton and its markets have been limited by the loss of domestic manufacturing, Pepper said.

There is a glimmer of opportunity, however. India, the world's largest producer of organic cotton and No. 2 producer of cotton overall, is restricting exports of its cotton to protect its textile and clothing factories. China, the largest producer of cotton overall and fifth largest producer of organic cotton, isn't growing enough to supply its factories, Pepper said.

Cotton growers have other opportunities as well. Samuel Danehower, University of Tennessee Extension specialist in farm management for eight counties in West Tennessee, said that higher prices for corn and soybeans in the past few years, boosted by the booming ethanol market, have made it worthwhile for growers to diversify and rotate grains on what had been long-time cotton ground.

Gary Adams, vice president of the National Cotton Council, said growers across the Mid-South have diversified and dramatically reduced cotton acreage in the past three years. Despite higher prices for cotton, he expects only a slight increase in cotton acreage this year.

Organic growers also have other options, thanks to the demand for organic food products. McKaskle, for example, has switched to rice. Others have turned to peanuts.

In light of the fact that organic could represent a growth opportunity for U.S.-grown fiber, Marquardt said, the National Cotton Council and Cotton Inc. should be supporting organic growers -- for instance, by "helping Mid-South growers figure out how to handle weeds and pests" -- instead of fighting them.

"I wish," she said, "they would help organic farmers become more competitive."