I first introduced you to Ouba Montadi from Burkina Faso in my post about our visit to our organic farming project (Visiting the Fields of White Gold).  Ouba is a farmer from the village of Fuanliedi.

Ouba told me, “it’s special that no chemicals are used.  It is an organic field and we do not use any chemical fertilizers.  We use a natural plant-based manure from beginning to end.”

In May, Ouba begins the planting process. It is important to begin putting the seeds in the earth before the first rain.  The rainy season usually begins in June and lasts until September or, at the latest, the beginning of October.  This is the cotton growth season.  The growth is dependent on rain, since there is no artificial watering system in these fields.  During that time, Ouba and the other farmers weed and add organic manure, created from plant extracts.  At the end of the rainy season, the West African sun dries the cotton fields.  “That’s when the cotton plants begin blooming and we start to harvest,” says Ouba.

Ouba and the other farmers – many of them women – pick the mature cotton blossoms. Bunches of the finest raw cotton then dry naturally between the small round houses and compounds inhabited by the farmers and their families.  This is the first step in creating beautiful, sustainable hessnatur apparel.

Exclusive Preview Summer Collection 2010

To create awareness of the importance of wearing organic cotton, our very own designer, Simone Janintz, created a tee made from cotton grown and harvested at the hessnatur organic cotton project in Burkina Faso.

The message, “the flowers of tomorrow are the seeds of today” on the outline of the African continent, doesn’t just speak to the cotton itself, but also to the belief that the environmental seeds we plant today will determine the flowers of our future.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED.

Win Today’s Tee!
If you want to join in spreading the awareness, the tee can be yours when you comment below, telling us why.  The winner will be chosen based on creativity and originality.

If you’re chosen, hessnatur will email you and ship the tee to the address provided in your email.

Contest Rules
Must be 18 years of age to enter.  Please, one entry per person.  Giveaway is available to residents of the U.S. only  If we don’t hear back from the entrant within twenty-four (24) hours, we’ll pick another winner.  No substitutions for cash. By submitting, you are agreeing to the full rules and restrictions.  Open for entries until Thursday, March 18, at 11:59 p.m. EST.

I really wanted to write a post about the importance of authentic organic cotton, but nothing says it better then this press release that we just sent out:

“Gene modified cotton from India tagged as organic cotton”, read the headline in The Financial Times. As the market leader in organic clothing in Germany, this is news that the company finds critically important. “When a product is tagged as organic, it has to be organic,” says Rolf Heimann, director of the Department of Innovation and Ecology at hessnatur.  To make certain that all hessnatur organic fabrics are just that has been a mandate at the company for 10 years.

In the current collection of hessnatur, about 6% of all organic cotton products come from cotton grown in India.  Most of hessnatur organic cotton, 94%, originates in Turkey and at the hessnatur cultivation project in Burkina Faso.  In every test that hessnatur has performed, and there are many, no gene modified cotton has been found.  “In the interest of hessnatur and its customers, we have very strict standards in the supply chain.  We check and monitor every step along the chain – from the cultivation of the organic cotton to the final product,” states Heimann.  Besides their own monitoring, hessnatur partners with outside organizations that, regularly and independently, monitor to make certain that the supply chain is “clean and transparent”.  The company also has a stable and long-lasting relationship with suppliers who are open to being monitored and share the hessnatur standard for environmental and ethical production.

Approximately 2 years ago, hessnatur began working with an institute to determine whether the cotton in the final product has been gene modified or not.

As the market leader in natural textiles, hessnatur is vigilant regarding this problem. In their own pioneering project in Burkina Faso (West Africa), the company supports the cultivation of organic cotton. Working with Helvetas, the Swiss Aid and Development Organization, hessnatur has been monitoring cotton seeds since 2005. It is possible to tell by looking at the seed whether or not it is gene modified. Gene modified cotton has an extra gene, which can be seen in a laboratory. Without the extra gene it is a natural cotton seed.  There is an additional risk of contamination when the cotton is in flower. Tests have proven that pollen can travel 50 meters at the most. So to avoid contamination, the farmers in Burkina Faso plant their organic cotton fields at least 100 meters from the fields where conventional or gene modified cotton is grown.

“We do not check once in a while”, says Heimann, “we check on a regular and permanent basis.” This is how hessnatur ensures that when they tag their cotton, organic cotton, it is.

Much to my delight, I have befriended another self proclaimed “plant geek” with a “thing” for sustainability. Together with his extended family, Justin Ridle is taking on the whopping project of establishing a 10 acre organic orchard from scratch. But calling it just an orchard doesn’t do justice to what this project could become.

The “Big Barn Farm” (formerly an ostrich farm, of all things) is all about establishing an edible ark of biodiversity to be enjoyed by generations to come. The goal is maximum bounty from the smallest footprint, using the least amount of natural resources. Planting vertical layers will imitate natural forests, for instance. Harvesting rainwater from the barn’s vast rooftop together with well placed swales will conserve water. Natural windbreaks, like pine nut trees, will protect the rest of the orchard from the elements.

For the best yield with the lowest impact, the orchard will use permaculture principles, and be populated not only by local heirloom plant varieties, but also exotic fruits and nuts well suited to the region, all grafted to native root stock and naturally resistant to pests and drought.

I found Justin’s description of medicinal/nutritional plants particularly fascinating, like mulberries and paw paws, as well as the just plain yummy sounding shipova and Chilean hazel.

True to my own heart, the Big Barn Farm composts cardboard, but it is taken a step further into sheet mulching. And speaking of mulching, I forgot to mention the wood chips! They are everywhere! Justin has been collecting and chipping the neighborhood garden waste for months to guarantee a nice bouncy loam for the garden’s floor, which saves water, adds nutrients, and fends off both frost and weeds.

His passion started at Bullocks Permaculture Homestead, and I’m thinking of giving them a visit as well. In the mean time, Justin has offered to come by our place for a bit of a botanical brainstorm and a lesson in grafting. And I definitely want to return to the Big Barn regularly to follow the orchard’s progress.

Justin’s family has 25 trees in so far, and a thousand more could come. I found the idea of planting so many trees daunting, but after so much planning, Justin is delighted to finally grab a shovel and get his ark underway, planting and growing into the future.

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.