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%

 Thank you for visiting my site. My main sources are fao.org, usda.gov, cia.gov, alibaba.com and many others.


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 http://ironrye.blogspot.com/2011/10/list-of-all-articles-at-iron-rye.html


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