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Sue Barneby and Adam Cotgreave work in our Penryn office - Sue as Design Manager and Adam as Wholesale Manager. Twice a year we visit the farms where our cotton is grown and meet the people that grow it. It's important for us that we have a great relationship with everybody involved in the production of our garments. Below Sue explains how our organic cotton is grown...

This November we visited a farm where Seasalt's organic cotton is grown. The organic cotton used to produce one Seasalt collection is grown on 5-6 farms just like the one we visited. The farm we went to was ½ hours drive North of Izmir in the region called Bergama.

Adam, Sue and Caglayan, our garment technologist

One acre of cotton field gives 450kg organic cotton (raw & unginned), 1.5kg of raw and unginned cotton makes 1 x finished womens t-shirt (200gsm). So that means it takes about 13.5 square metres of cotton field to make make 1 t-shirt!

When you are buying a t-shirt made from conventional, nonorganic cotton, think of the 13 odd square metres of land getting doused in toxic chemicals... it is easy to see how a conventional t-shirt has an average of 17 teaspoons of insecticide used in its production!

The Kadioglu Group oversees many farms and factories in the Izmir area (they own & oversee the individual organic & non organic farming projects), this is not limited to cotton, it also covers organic and non organic cotton, fruits & vegetables including lentils, raisins, chickpeas etc. The family who owns the Kadioglu Group has been in the export business for 150 years and are famous in Izmir. They finance the farming, pay premiums and rates & help the farmers. The factory where we manufacture our garments is also linked to this group.

The farm we just visited is on a plain flat area behind some mountains, behind which is the Aegean Sea. This means there is always a constant wind which naturally helps to keep insects away from the cotton.

The seeds are planted in May and the cotton is then harvested for a three and a half week period in October. Cotton is harvested twice as the plants' seed pods open gradually. The first harvest always yields the best quality cotton. The cotton is always harvested by hand and not machine to ensure the maximum yield possible with minimum damage to the plants, this also ensures the best health of the plants.

The fields are planted in three year rotations. Cotton is planted for two years and then a different crop, such as corn that we saw, is planted for the third. This keeps the soil healthy and rich in nutrients and provides the farmers with alternative incomes and feed for their animals.

Irrigation is supplied by water channels and pipes running through the field giving water directly to the base of the plants and ensuring no water is lost to the air, the water is controlled by the farmers. If there is too much rain during the growing season (as there was this year) the cotton yield and quality can be compromised, i.e. the lint is not as fluffy. It is very important, and very difficult, to strike the best balance for the optimum conditions for the best quality cotton.

The location of this farm in the flat plateau behind the mountains ensures moist air from the sea always flows over the cotton fields ensuring the plants are not burnt during the hot dry summers.

When the cotton is ginned, and the seeds removed from the lint, 10% of these seeds are kept and processed using organically approved methods for planting the next crop. The rest of the seeds are made into oil that can be sold, this oil is used on animals' feet. The seeds put in our seed bags attached to each of our garments actually come from these organic farms as well.

To achieve Soil Association certification the entire production has to meet strict standards, right from the farmers field through to delivery in Cornwall. We are always really pleased with the pride that our farmers have in producing such a high quality crop without the routine use of pesticides.

Next time I visit, I'll tell you about our visit to the dye house, which is something we get asked about a lot!

Sue Barneby, in Turkey, November 2006

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