it is a fact that conventional production methods (of cotton as
well as textiles) are associated with significant and avoidable environmental or health-
related costs
hese concerns have led to a number of actions to induce a switch to such
sustainable alternatives as organic cotton, integrated pest management, chemical-free
textile processing,
2
and effluent quality standards.
The cotton commodity chain can be divided into three broad stages: production,
processing, and marketing.
The textiles and apparel industry is a classic example of what Gary Gereffi (1994)
terms a buyer-driven global commodity chain, in other words one that is driven by large
retailers rather than producers or processors. According to Gereffi, commodity chains
have three main dimensions: 1) and input-output structure, 2) territoriality, ie spatial
dispersion or concentration of enterprises of different sizes and types, and 3) a
governance structure,
