Washington | The New York Times
When the US Department of Agriculture completed its calculations last month, the results were staggering: 2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the country’s main growing region, where it will later be sold around the world in the form of sanitary napkins. Cloth diapers, gauze bandages and other products.
In the biggest loss on record, Texas farmers lost 74% of the crops they grow nearly 15 million acres last year due to heat and parched soils, the effects of a particularly intense drought made worse by climate change.
This decline helped push sanitary pad prices up 13% over the past 12 months. Cotton balls were up 9% and gauze pads were up 8%.
It’s an example of how climate change is affecting the cost of everyday living in ways consumers may not realize.
West Texas is the primary source of upland cotton in the country, which in turn is the world’s thirdlargest producer and largest exporter of the fiber. This means the collapse of this cotton crop will have repercussions beyond the United States, economists say, and will be felt on store shelves around the world.
“Climate change is a stealthy inflation driver,” said Nicole Corbett, vice president of NielsonIQ. “As extreme weather continues to affect crops and production capacity, the cost of staple foods will continue to rise.”
According to the Forum for the Future, a nonprofit organization, by 2040, half of the regions that grow cotton around the world will be at “high or very high climate risk” from drought, floods and fires.
Texas cotton offers a glimpse of the future. Scientists predict that heat and drought, exacerbated by climate change, will continue to reduce crop yields in the southwestern United States. A 2020 study found that heat and drought, exacerbated by climate change, had already reduced cotton production in Arizona’s highlands and projected future cotton crops in the region could decline by 40% between 2036 and 2065.
Cotton is a lead crop, said Natalie Simpson, a supply chain logistics expert at the University of Buffalo.
“When the climate destabilizes it, we see changes almost immediately,” Simpson said. “That applies wherever it is grown. The future care that everyone depends on will be very different from today. The trend is already there.”
Translated by Paulo Migliacci