The road through Cristalina, Brazil is in the middle of the tropics, but the fields on either side look like they are covered in snow — little white puffs of cotton stretching to the horizon.
The alabaster plants interspersed with the corn and soybean fields outside the central-western town are part of a silent revolution in Brazil: facing negative attention over the agribusiness industry’s environmental impact, farmers are increasingly turning to cotton and adopting sustainable techniques to produce it.
After increasing exports 15-fold in the past two decades, Brazil is now the world’s second-biggest cotton supplier, after the United States — and the biggest producer of sustainable cotton.—AFP