By Karin Frost, ERGObaby Designer and President and Claire Kellerman, Permaculture Designer and Writer

We cherish our children and devote ourselves to serving their best interests in their health, happiness and development. When they are babies, we hold them close to our hearts to nurture our bond with them. In their maturation they insist on freedom and we gradually let them go to foster their independence.

We give them the best guidance we know so they may make the best choices along the pathway of life. Our choices decide the quality of life for generations to come. Our Universal circumstances are now pressuring us as a collective society to choose between health and sustainability or toxins and conventional agriculture.

Cotton In Our Everyday Lives

A helpful fact from the Untouched World website (untouchedworld.com) warns “pesticides used in conventional cotton farming can enter the human food chain.

Cotton is grown primarily for its fiber and is regulated as a non-food crop. However, the majority of the cotton plant by weight ends up in our food supply. Cottonseed oil is used in processed foods. Beef and dairy cows are fed cotton straw, cotton seed meal and waste from cotton gins.”

It is very common to find salad dressings, candy and cakes that include cottonseed oil in their ingredients, and since it is not organic cottonseed oil, it is the sludge oil full of toxic chemicals.

The Shift from Nature To Chemicals

Why do we need to choose between taking the organic high road to healthy vitality versus the slippery slide down, poisoning our foods and fibers through conventional agriculture? How did we get to this point?

Organic cotton grows beautifully within verdant ecosystems nourished by living soil and by the cycles of life. Waste is recycled into nutrients, and the sun and rain are utilized to grow healthy plants blossoming with white cotton puffs.

Organic agriculture is based on sound principles that enhance wellbeing of the fields as well as the farmers who work the fields and the products that are produced for the consumers of our global environment. This also includes caring for the people who transform the fiber into textiles and the fabric into products. Organic cotton is the sustainable and supportive choice.

So, why and how did our successful organic world change less than a century ago?

One factor was the surplus of war chemicals at the end of World War II. Left over bomb ingredients, e.g., ammonium nitrate, and bug repellent, e.g., DDT, and other chemicals were engineered into agricultural products and used to kill the plant pests and weeds. The excess chemicals found a home in our fields, our food chain, and our fatty tissue, leading to disease in our bodies, and wreaking havoc on our ecosystems.

This singular focus of reaping profits from excess chemicals ignored the cost of health on all levels, including the birds and insects whose contributions are vital to the soil and ecosystem. Our soil has suffered desertification as a result, losing its vitality and natural beneficial relationships wherever toxic chemicals are used.

Mr. Ramji Raja, consultant for ERGObaby’s Organics production in India, offered his insight, “The end of the war may have been the start of chemical farming, but that was just the seed! It was the intensive agriculture taken over by corporate entities that brought the most detrimental viewpoint; they saw the land as a factory. They ignored the fact that soil is a living organism, not taking care to see that the life of the soil was nourished and sustained.”

Proudly, Mr. Raja shared, “Textiles have been created in India for 5,000 to 6,000 years, and were always grown organically until the British came in the early 1900’s. Large mills were set up, and grew, until India produced 97% conventional (toxic, chemical) cotton textiles. It has been a process and has taken years of education, and increasing lobbying and awareness to move organics forward. India is now the world’s largest producer of organic fibers.”

Back To Our Roots

Mr. Raja is enthusiastic about the operations he oversees that create ERGObaby Organic products, “We look at the entire system around the baby carrier, not only using very stringent testing and certifying by the highest organic standards.

We also put a huge emphasis on environmental and social accountability, looking at the fiber, spinning and weaving processes, and how they affect the water that leaves our factory. Our water goes through three stages of purification until finally it is used outside our factory to water the trees. These are trees we plant around the factory to honor our visitors.”

Each visitor has a plaque with their name on it by the tree that has been planted in their presence.

Choosing organic cotton has the most positive impact because it supports and enriches all life, including everything that touches our skin, feeds our bodies, and nurtures our peace of mind.

We choose organic as often as possible in these times of transition for all these reasons. Organic cotton is grown from a web of healthy relationships locally and around the world; an inviting and very easy personal choice to make.

Take a look at our Organic Ergo Baby carrier.

-MOBS

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