“Better Cotton” in the Anthropocene

Cotton is a unique agrifood crop due to its crucial colonial role in the development of industrial capitalism based on enslaved labor production and proletarian labor processing, and its current substantial ecological footprint in both production and processing. Various programs to develop a “better cotton” make up about one-fourth of total global cotton production. This paper employs a commodity chain conceptual framework to investigate the development and implications of these “better cotton” programs in the Anthropocene. We focus on two programs – organic cotton and CmiA (cotton made in Africa) – to illustrate the successes and challenges in scaling up alternative agrifood initiatives, while at the same time tracing the continued threads of neo-colonialism as the drivers of these commodity chains.