Last February I visited the hessnatur/Helvetas (the Swiss NGO) organic cotton project in Burkina Faso.  I returned in late November to learn more about the planting, growing and harvesting at this important venture.

We arrived in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso in West Africa, and headed eastbound to the town of Fada N’Gourma. As we drove I could see the cotton plants just beginning to grow. The last month had provided perfect conditions under the West African sun.  Most of the fields I saw beside the road were conventional cotton fields. Not the organic fields that I was expecting during my visit.

After driving for two and a half hours to Fada N’Gourma we arrived at a small and simple track that led us to the organic cotton fields of the village of Fuanliedi. Here I met with the farmer Ouba. He  remembered us from our last visit and was happy to see our team again. With me were Georg Felber, the Project Manager from Helvetas, our translator, Daouda, our driver, Samba, and our videographer, Hartmut. I can’t speak or understand the local Oubas dialect (which is call Gourmantché), but Ouba communicated with his eyes, his smile and his body language.

Ouba told me – through our translator – that this year’s harvest wasn’t as good as last season’s because of the heavy rainfall in the past few weeks.  The amount of organic cotton was less than last year, but the quality of the cotton had improved. So, for him the harvest was on the plus side. In addition to organic cotton, he also grows organic peanuts and sesame – important for feeding his family and providing additional income, because peanuts and sesame can be sold at the local markets.

As the sun set, we left the organic cotton field and walked with Ouba and the other farmers to the center of the village. Here the first cleaning of the cotton took place before its journey to Ougadougou. I brought pictures from our last trip with me, also a movie that we made on that journey with Wolf Luedge, our CEO (which can be seen here on YouTube).

Everyone from the village stared with fascination at my laptop. People from the village saw themselves on the computer monitor – quite a never-before happening here in Fuanliedi!

More about my trip to Burkina Faso will follow in my next blog posts.

Tags: Burkina Faso, Environment, organic cotton, organic farming, Social responsibility, social standards, sustainability

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 11:24 am and is filed under Environment, Material, Production, Projects, Social responsibility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.