A ship left Haiti last week carrying three containers with 29,000 lbs of cotton that was grown (using organic principles), ginned (seeds removed) and baled by members of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA). This marks the first major commercial shipment of what was the country’s fourth largest agricultural export until cotton disappeared in the late 1980s.
This particular shipment will be turned into fabric for the VF Corporation, which owns brands like Timberland, Vans, The North Face and other major clothing and footwear companies.
Currently 50 out of the SFA’s total of 3,000 farms are growing cotton, but within five years, as part of our overall expansion plan, we expect to have several thousand farms producing close to one million lbs of ginned cotton per year… and to keep expanding from there.
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Hugh Locke, President, SFA
Timote Georges, Executive Director, SFA
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Bales of Haitian cotton prior to being loaded onto a ship for export.