Issue 399 of New Internationalist

Reader-owned global journalism

April 2007

Cotton: the peril and the promise

The magic crop was once thought to be the 'white gold' that would lead the Global South out of poverty. But all is not well, neither in the cotton fields nor in the sweatshop factories that turn out your T-shirts and blue jeans. We follow the cotton chain and find links that are tangled in exploitation and tragedy. Our editor travels to India to discover an unfolding disaster – and the determination to reshape the fabric of the cotton economy. But there's more to the story of cotton that that – a fascinating history, a contested present and a perilous future filled with promise.

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