Agriculture
Cotton
Where it comes from, what share of a sector’s output it is, and which conflicts the model routes through it.
This page shows production, shares and inputs. It shows no death toll per tonne. The shares below say what fraction of a sector’s output this material is and what fraction of a conflict’s harm the model routes to it; multiplying either by a count of people produces a result, and a result is not published until it has a run, an uncertainty interval and a confidence grade.
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Who produces it
The publisher’s own figures for 2024, across 98 countries. Nothing here has been attributed to anything.
| Country | Produced | Share | Figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| China CHN |
18,700,000 t | 26.0% | official |
| India IND |
15,000,000 t | 20.8% | official |
| United States USA |
9,573,295 t | 13.3% | official |
| Brazil BRA |
8,523,606 t | 11.8% | official |
| Pakistan PAK |
3,500,618 t | 4.9% | official |
| Uzbekistan UZB |
2,938,089 t | 4.1% | official |
| Australia AUS |
2,400,000 t | 3.3% | official |
| Turkiye TUR |
2,243,000 t | 3.1% | official |
| Argentina ARG |
1,269,399 t | 1.8% | official |
| Burkina Faso BFA |
769,440 t | 1.1% | imputed |
| Mali MLI |
640,000 t | 0.9% | official |
| Benin BEN |
635,976 t | 0.9% | official |
| Turkmenistan TKM |
600,238 t | 0.8% | official |
| Cameroon CMR |
490,900 t | 0.7% | external |
| Mexico MEX |
479,732 t | 0.7% | official |
Production figures: FAO, FAOSTAT, CC BY 4.0. FAO endorsement of any derived figure is neither stated nor implied.
What share of a sector’s output it is
Divided out of production rather than typed in: a sector’s material split is the share of what it actually produced. These are the GLOBAL pooled figures; the model itself uses a separate mix for every country and year, because a global one would attribute Congolese deaths to Chilean copper.
| Sector | Share of output | How |
|---|---|---|
| Crop and animal production, hunting and related service activities 01 |
1.3% | global mix · LOW |
Mass and value answer different questions and are never added. A tonne of gold and a tonne of iron ore are the same mass and are not the same money, so the share of a sector’s harm this material carries depends on which was asked.
Which conflicts route harm to it
The mean share of each conflict’s harm that the model routes to this material, averaged over the country-years it covers. A mean of shares is not a share of a total, and the two differ whenever coverage is uneven.
| Conflict | Mean share of its harm | Years |
|---|---|---|
| Afghanistan: Government | 0.52% | 37 |
| Syria: Government | 0.39% | 15 |
| Nigeria: Government | 0.32% | 17 |
| Sudan: Government | 0.26% | 37 |
| Russia - Ukraine | 0.22% | 1 |
| Jalisco Cartel New Generation - Sinaloa Cartel | 0.18% | 11 |
| Government of Rwanda - Civilians | 0.17% | 16 |
| Colombia: Government | 0.07% | 37 |
| DR Congo (Zaire): Government | 0.07% | 26 |
| Sri Lanka (Ceylon): Eelam | 0.00% | 1 |
These are shares of a conflict, not counts of people. The number of deaths they correspond to is computed and is not published: it has no uncertainty interval and has not been backtested.
Harm per tonne and per euro
Harm per tonne and harm per euro are both computed. Neither is shown.
Harm per tonne of this material is defined for 55 years, 1970 to 2024: the years for which the model holds harm and world production of it has been ingested.
Both are counts of people divided by a quantity, from a run that has no uncertainty interval and no backtest yet, and nothing of that kind is published before session 21. What this page can say now is whether each is defined, and on what basis.
Which products use it
Semi-finished and finished products whose bills of materials reach this material, through every intermediate step, and how much of it one of them needs — losses included.
| Product | Needs |
|---|---|
| Cotton fabric
semi-finished product |
3.11 kg for one kilogram of cotton fabric |
| Cotton yarn
semi-finished product |
3.03 kg for one kilogram of spun cotton yarn |
| Denim fabric
semi-finished product |
3.10 kg for one kilogram of cotton denim fabric |
| Cotton T-shirt
finished product |
518 g for one 100% cotton T-shirt of 150 g |
| Jeans
finished product |
2.55 kg for one pair of stretch denim jeans of about 725 g, as Nudie Jeans made one style in 2017 |
Quantities, not harm: how much of the material the product’s chain requires. What that carries is not shown.
What producing it consumes
What one t of this material consumes, from cited technical coefficients. A country-specific coefficient supersedes the global one shown here wherever the data supports one.
| Input | Per unit | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh water | 3,644 m3 | Mekonnen, M.M. & Hoekstra, A.Y. (2011), "The green, blue and… · LOW |
Fresh water: Global average, green + blue + grey. The same paper gives country figures varying by a factor of five; using the global average here is the fallback plan/14 S13 warns about, and it is marked global and LOW so that a country result can say so.
Sources
| Release | Retrieved | Checksum |
|---|---|---|
| faostat · qcl-20251231 | 2026-09-29 | c5835418c18f9322… |
FAO. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAOSTAT. Licence: CC-BY-4.0. FAO endorsement of these derived figures is neither stated nor implied — qcl-20251231, retrieved 2026-09-29 from https://bulks-faostat.fao.org/production/Production_Crops_Livestock_E_All_Data_(Normalized).zip. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Data modified by HumanToll.