I have been asked multiple times about using cotton “gin trash” as a garden amendment. This recent question from Bonnie here on the blog reminded me that I should share my thoughts on it publicly.

David, I’ve been hearing about free compost (Gin Trash) from the West FL Cotton Gin in Walnut Hill, FL. You can get as much as you want and they load it for you. I know they defoliate cotton plants with herbicides before harvesting the cotton (or at least they used to years ago) so would this compost be safe to use in our home gardens? I understand farmers get it by the trailer loads to amend their fields and call it BLACK GOLD. I’ve known some local home gardeners that get utility trailer loads and have had no problems with their crops.

In todays times where it is imperative to GROW YOUR OWN FOOD TO SURVIVE, I don’t want to risk contaminating my soil (as with Grazon) so would like your opinion.

I do have my own compost that I make but since I have to garden in containers due to my poor clay soil full of iron rock so I use a LOT of compost filling those big black cattle mineral tubs.
I would appreciate your opinion/advice on this Gin Trash Compost. (I’m your neighbor in [Lower Alabama] AKA Deep South Bama GRITS on YT & Freesteading).

Thank you for the question. Let’s jump in.

Gin Trash Grows Beautiful Tomatoes

Before we moved to Lower Alabama, we had never lived in a cotton producing area, and therefore had not been acquainted with the use of gin trash as a garden amendment.

Our former landlord, who is a sometime gardener and regular planter of deer food plots, mentioned the value of gin trash as an amendment.

At first, I was quite interested. Then, we came across a beautiful garden while driving through the pretty old town of Atmore. Rachel and I were in our van, and we saw the garden – and the gardener in it – and I said, “Whoa – look at that fellow’s amazing tomato plants! I need to talk to him!”

So I got out and said “hi,” leaving my rather embarrassed wife in the car, and he was gracious enough to give me a garden tour. He was growing tomatoes, peppers and other produce which he sold to a local Mexican restaurant, among other outlets.

“How did you grow these amazing tomatoes?” I asked. Tomatoes are not the easiest plant to grow here in the Deep South.

“I till in some gin trash and old peanut hull waste in late winter, and then plant them in the spring. I get it for free, and load it up on my trailer.”

He showed me his piles of rotten peanut hulls and a pile of rich, black, composted gin trash.

Now I was really interested. It worked like magic, obviously. And in our acid, sandy grit, organic matter was always lacking.

As Farm Progress notes:

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure is not only the adage upon which yard and garage sales are based, it’s also an apt description of the heightened demand for what used to be called cotton gin waste.

In the past few years cotton acreage has dropped across the Southeast, prices have fluctuated dramatically and King Cotton’s crown seems to be crumbling. Not so for cotton gin trash — it has earned its new name Cotton Gin By-Product.

While a high percentage of the cotton grown in the U.S. finds a home overseas, the cotton seed and other by-products, formerly known as gin trash, stay right here. The market is good, prices are good and demand is up for these products.

Okay, easy enough. It’s the leftover waste from processing cotton. And it falls under the “compost everything!” category.

But is Cotton Gin SAFE to Use?

But there’s a catch.

Like many of her neighbors in coastal North Carolina, Amy Midyette comes down with “cotton flu” in the autumn. Her symptoms—asthma attacks, headaches, tremors and fatigue—last from two days to a week. And they reoccur every time farmers send up crop dusters to spray the fields near her home.

The chemicals that bother Midyette and other residents of cotton-growing areas from the Carolinas to California are defoliants, used to kill the leaves on cotton plants before the mechanical pickers go in to harvest. It isn’t uncommon for the mist of these powerful neurotoxins to drift into neighborhoods. “They even spray the fields right across the street from the elementary school,” says Midyette.

Most people think of cotton as a “natural” product. The reality: Cotton is one of the most chemically intensive crops in the world. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 84 million pounds of pesticides were applied to the nation’s 14.4 million acres of cotton in the year 2000, and more than two billion pounds of fertilizers were spread on those same fields. Seven of the 15 pesticides commonly used on cotton in the United States are listed as “possible,” “likely,” “probable” or “known” human carcinogens by the Environmental Protection Agency. And cotton defoliants are “the most toxic farm chemicals currently on the market,” says Fawn Pattison, executive director of the Agricultural Resources Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the use of harmful pesticides.

Cotton fields around here are sprayed heavily and repeatedly, and at the end of the season, they are blasted again with defoliants before being harvested for the cotton.

And Cotton Gin Trash is GMO…

Though it is reported that pesticide use on cotton has declined in recent years, it is because much of the cotton has now also been genetically modified:

Countless improvements have been identified for pesticide use around the world. Between 1992 and 2019, Australian cotton growers have for example reduced their use of insecticides as measured in grams/bale by 97%. Australian use of all types of pesticides went down by 18.2% in just five years between 2014 and 2019. In the United States, cotton yield has steadily increased while overall pesticide use has remained consistent.

One of the reasons for the significant reduction in the use of insecticides is the global introduction of Bt cotton. Bt, a bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis, kills a variety of insects (chiefly worm pests) that harm the cotton plant. In the 1990s, scientists were able to move the gene that encodes Bt directly into a plant. After rigorous scientific evaluation, Bt cotton was placed on the market in 1996, allowing the plants to protect themselves with a significantly lower need for insecticides. Together with integrated pest management practices and other improvements, Bt cotton helped drive down insecticide applications in the U.S. by 66% in terms of pounds/acre between 1994 and 2019. Overall, while worldwide cotton production has risen, the total volume of insecticides used has declined.

Though GMO plants will compost just fine, it’s worth thinking about if you want to avoid that practice.

Final Thoughts on Using Gin Trash

The Rodale Institute notes:

• Cotton is considered the world’s dirtiest crop due to its heavy use of pesticides. Aldicarb, cotton’s second best-selling insecticide and most acutely poisonous to humans and wildlife, was phased out of use in the U.S. from 2014-2018 after 16 states reported it in their groundwater. However, Aldicarb is still used in 25 countries.
• Worldwide, cotton covers 2.5% of the cultivated land and cotton growers use 16% of the world’s pesticides. Eight of the top 10 pesticides most commonly used on U.S. conventionally produced cotton were classified as moderately to highly hazardous by the World Health Organization.
• Cotton is one of the top four GMO crops produced in the world which includes soy, canola, and corn. GMO cotton production ranks ninth in global crop production.
• On average, 90% of U.S. cotton in 2010 was genetically engineered, according to a USDA survey. However 95 to 98% of all cotton is now genetically engineered in nine of the eleven cotton-producing states surveyed. (Source USDA Economic Research Service, July 1, 2011.)

With all that in mind, I cannot in good faith use cotton gin trash, as much as I would love to have a free source of compost. We don’t know how much these toxins will break down in composting. I’ve been very tempted to get a load of it, along with a load of peanut hulls, and then mix the two to make a potting soil mix for my nursery; however, I just can’t get past the list of toxic pesticides and herbicides used in the production of cotton.

Yes, it will grow great-looking tomatoes. But at what cost?

Yet again, we are being poisoned by Big Ag. Much as the manure and hay supply has been rendered toxic, cotton gin trash has also been subjected to the evils of science run amok.

What is your risk tolerance?

We can’t reach perfection, but we can sure avoid some of the riskier amendments in our gardens – and the risk/reward on cotton gin trash just doesn’t add up for us.