Travels of A T-shirt in the Global Economy

Here are links for one of my favorite books - Travels of a T-Shirt by Pietra Rivoli

The NPR audio stories done in 2005. There are three segments.

1. the texas cotton farmer

2. in China t-shirt factory

3. in Alabama textile town

Videos:

UC Santa Barbara 50 minute presentation by author Pietra Rivoli 2008

C-span video of a 36 minute presentation by author Pietra Rivoli given at Bentley College 2006

This is PBS video about second hand clothing in Africa

The cotton plant

Video of the mechanical cotton picking process

Video of the pickup of the cotton brick

video of the ginning process

video showing the see after ginning

video showing the clean cotton bale

video of the spinning process

An issue to think about is US is trade policy and our agricultural subsidies.

Here is the interesting story from 2010 on the US making payments to Brazil so the supports to US cotton farmers can stay in place.

Informational documents

2004 report for congress on Cotton production and support

Here is the Congressional Research Organization Report on the Brazil payments.

Cotton statistics as of Jan 2011

oxfam report on Cotton in africa

More stuff!!

Cottonseed as a dairy food

Here is the link to the NPR planet money t-shirt project that is ongoing