THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9410200357
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JODY R. SNIDER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SMITHFIELD LENGTH: Long : 146 lines
In Garysburg, N.C., just over the Virginia line and not far from where Interstate 95 crosses the Roanoke River, a 60-acre rainbow of burnt red, khaki brown and olive green cotton has bloomed.
And just off Virginia Route 10 in Smithfield, 10 acres of brown cotton have puffed out on a farm where Chuck and Clay Griffin work.
You didn't know cotton grows in colors? Most people don't. But these strange fields are more than novelty. For Hampton environmentalist and entrepreneur Tom Reynolds and a handful of farmers he has growing colored cotton, it's the beginning of what they hope will be a million-dollar business in Earth-friendly clothing.
Reynolds says he hopes to have a line of ``green'' clothing that could include organic cotton socks, tank tops, shorts, jeans, polo shirts and fabrics. This year, Reynolds has introduced a line of T-shirts made from last year's crop of brown cotton. He calls his apparel line Jefferson Fibers. The environmental advantage is that the cotton is grown without chemicals and needs no dye for color.
After bending the ears of farmers up and down the lower East Coast since 1992, Reynolds finally has a string of them from Isle of Wight County to Tifton, Ga., who have bought into his dream.
It began in July 1992, when Reynolds spent eight months riding the back roads, trying to get the attention of skeptical farmers. In March 1993, he found the Griffins, who agreed to try 10 acres of brown cotton and 10 acres of organic white - grown without the use of chemicals - in Smithfield.
``This guy was hell-bent on trying this thing,'' Chuck Griffin says, ``and so we said we'd give him a shot.''
For Reynolds, the Griffins were the first big payoff. They were the first farmers to take a chance and grow a new crop with a very select market.
``Now everyone in Isle of Wight County wants to grow colored cotton,'' Reynolds says. ``It's neat, it's a novelty - but it's also worth a lot more money than the conventional cotton.''
In fact, the colored variety brings double the price paid for conventional white cotton, Reynolds says.
``I'm not in it for the novelty part,'' Chuck Griffin says. ``I'm in it for the profit.''
And so is Reynolds.
Although Reynolds has no farm background, farmers across the United States seem to be listening as he travels through Virginia and North Carolina, picking up recruits like Garysburg farmers David Dunlow and David Grant, as well as several farmers from Georgia. Next stop, he says, is South Carolina.
And when Reynolds talks, he speaks about profits and the trendiest trends in the fashion industry - clothes made from naturally grown colored cotton and organic cotton.
``I'm an environmentalist, but I'm also a capitalist,'' says Reynolds, who started an organic farming company, Jefferson Farms Inc., with his sister in 1992.
That same year, Reynold's farm became the East Coast agent for strains of colored cotton bred by a California company, BC Cotton Inc. And that's when the search for cotton farmers began.
``I think I'll have some more company next year with the colored cotton market. I hope to have 700 acres this side of the Mississippi,'' Reynolds says.
BC Cotton President Harvey Campbell says that Reynolds is one of about three people he has working cotton-growing areas; Texas, California and East Coast fields grow several thousand acres of colored cotton by about 50 producers for BC Cotton.
``In five years, we hope to have 250,000 to 300,000 bales of colored cotton,'' Campbell says. ``This market will grow because there is a demand for colored cotton. It costs $1.50 a pound to dye white cotton.''
And from the farmers' perspective, growing colored cotton can be more profitable, says Grant, the Garysburg farmer. His brown cotton is yielding 600 pounds per acre, compared with 1,000 pounds for white, he says.
``But the brown cotton is bought at double the price of the white conventional cotton, so it's like picking 1,200 pounds to the acre of brown cotton - at half the ginning price,'' Grant says.
``There's a driving interest here in the colored cotton because everyone is afraid that we're going to lose the peanut program, and we'll be driven out of the peanut business one day.''
But the expansion of cotton acreage can go only so far.
``BC Cotton is very careful not to let any one farmer have too much acreage because they don't want to break anyone if they find out that this cotton is not feasible to grow,'' Grant says.
He is willing to grow it because he sees it as an opportunity to grow a new crop for a buyer that has said it will buy all Grant can produce.
``BC Cotton was assuming all the marketing risk,'' Grant says. ``The only risk we had was whether we could produce the crop, and that's what we do for a living.''
Now that Reynolds has a small nucleus of growers, he's trying to break into the foreign market, selling cotton bales, yarn, fabrics and finished goods produced by Jefferson Fabrics.
For two years, he's been pitching colored cotton to foreign-trade advisers in Japan.
Last week he made the same pitch standing next to a senior Japanese adviser in the Griffins' colored-cotton field in Smithfield.
``We gave him some brown cotton to hold,'' Reynolds says, ``and he petted the cotton just like it was a puppy. And then he got this big smile on his face and said, `This is the first time I've ever been in a cotton field in my life. Seeing is believing.' ''
Reynolds says that the adviser plans to return Nov. 8 to talk again.
And yet, despite the smatterings of colored-cotton fields sprouting up on the East Coast, some people still don't believe colored cotton exists, including some at the Agricultural Stabilization Conservation Service office in Richmond.
``We have an ASCS director coming from Southampton County to pull up a plant and take it to Richmond because there are still people there who don't believe it's happening,'' Reynolds says.
He holds a stem of brown cotton and shakes his head. ``Can you believe that?'' MEMO: History: Colored cotton not new
Long before white cotton was thought up, the Peruvians were spinning
and weaving more than 200 colors of naturally colored cotton, according
to Tom Reynolds of Jefferson Farms Inc.
In fact, he says, the Peruvians have been spinning and weaving
colored cotton for more than 4,500 years. Peru has about 200 germplasms
of naturally colored cotton. Colors include flame red-orange, mauve, and
several shades of brown, green and gray.
But Peruvians weren't the only pioneers in the field of colored
cotton.
Textiles produced from naturally colored cotton also have been found
in tombs in the Middle East. And before the time of the Aztec empire,
the indigenous peoples of Mexico were cultivating brown and yellow
cotton.
In America, colored cotton has been cultivated by European settlers
since the early 1700s.
Colored cotton began to die off during the Civil War, when the
international market for the white cottons of Peru expanded rapidly and
government officials began to discourage the cultivation of colored
cotton.
White cotton, which could be dyed to produce more dramatic colors,
actually was bred from colored cotton, Reynolds says.
But now, anthropologists and researchers are encouraging a return to
the production of naturally colored cotton because of an evolving
``green market'' of environmentally concerned consumers, .
In Peru, however, it is now illegal to export naturally colored
cotton.
- Jody Snider
ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
JOHN H. SHEALLY II/Staff
David Grant, left, and Hampton environmentalist and entrepreneur Tom
Reynolds examine colored cotton grown on Grant's farm in Garysburg,
N.C.
by CNB