It’s already happening.

Harvesting organic cotton.

The organic way

To help bring their organic cotton to fruition, the farmers Parrish and Watson hired Mary Wilks, a certified crop consultant who was already working with them on other organic crops, including sweet potatoes, soybeans, tobacco, figs, blackberries and butterbeans. She monitored the cotton throughout the season — scouting and troubleshooting — helped with marketing and completed piles of the government paperwork that accompanies organic farming. To be certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a crop must be grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides, and the seeds must not have been treated or genetically modified, such as for resistance to herbicides. Also, the land must have been free of any chemicals for three years.

Organic farmers use multiple strategies, including incorporating animal manure to make the soil fertile, orienting crops a specific way to shade out weeds, timing the planting to avoid the most damaging life stages of pests, using only approved natural pesticides, and controlling weeds by hand or cultivation machinery. Organic cotton farmers must depend on frost to naturally defoliate the plants before harvesting the bolls. Leaves add extra trash to the harvested fiber and may also stain the lint. Conventionally grown cotton is defoliated by herbicides as soon as bolls are mature. Due to a late frost this past fall, the organic cotton plants shed their leaves uniformly and cleanly, says Wilks.

Wilks says weeds were the biggest obstacles they faced last year. In spite of the challenges, 77 percent of the fiber grown was usable, and the quality was above average among cotton graded in the Southeast, she says. Organic cotton prices for the U.S. crop in 2011 were 50 to 60 percent higher than non-organic prices, says Wilks. North Carolina farmers sold their organic cotton for $1.75 a pound. By comparison, conventional cotton brought 72 cents a pound in 2010, according to the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. It’s more expensive to grow organic cotton due largely to the extra labor involved. Watson says no one can predict whether organic cotton will become a game changer here. “At this point, the bottom line is you’re not making any more money on it than you are regular cotton,” says Watson, who still grows most of his cotton conventionally.

“The profit margin for organic cotton at this time is not as high as some other organic crops like vegetables,” says Wilks. “However, it is a good crop to add to the rotation, and North Carolina buyers have said they want more of our product.” For now, Parrish and Watson are sticking with it — they sowed 45 acres for the current season, says Wilks. She thinks at least 1,000 acres could realistically be cultivated in the state. Organic cotton farms in the United States range in size from a few dozen acres to 4,500, according to the Organic Trade Association. Texas is the largest producer.

Organic cotton makes up a tiny fraction of cotton produced in North Carolina (800,000 total acres of cotton were harvested in 2011) and in the United States. Of the 10 billion pounds of cotton grown in the country in 2010, only 6.3 million pounds were organic, according to OTA and USDA statistics. However, the USDA’s Economic Research Service reports that organic farming overall is one of the fastest growing sectors in U.S. agriculture, and organic cotton is part of that trend.