“When the world was on our radio, hard work was on our minds.
We lived our day-to-day in plain dirt fashion,
With ol' overalls and cotton balls all strapped across your back
Man, it's hard to make believe there ain't nothing wrong.”

- From “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream)” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

When I was an itty-bitty baby, my momma would rock me in a cradle, but not in any old cotton fields back home. In fact, I was never aware that Barbados had a cotton industry until much, much later on in life.

The verse quoted above is from one of my all-time favourite Country songs, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Long Hard Road”, which recalls with fondness the writer’s early days in the cotton belt down south (in the U.S.), despite the hardships of the life.

In Barbados, growing and picking cotton have always been secondary to growing and reaping sugar cane. I think that’s because it is harder to pick cotton, but there must be other reasons, as well, no doubt the major one being the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement of the early 1950s which gave the Caribbean a sweetheart deal in the form of an ever-increasing price for unlimited quantities of sugar. That agreement became grandfathered into the successive Lomé Conventions, but all of that is slipping into history, and as we all know, we have to find new uses for sugar cane and invest millions in a multi-purpose sugar plant to produce not only sugar, but also ethanol and electricity.

In the meantime, these islands paid handsomely in court some years back to retain the right to the West Indian Sea Island Cotton or WISICA trademark, which tells the world that our cotton is the finest (and the rarest) in the world.

Still, cotton as a viable contributor to our foreign-exchange earning capacity was nowhere near its full potential, but all that changed when a southern gentleman by the name of Martin Carstarphen came into the picture. A member of a famous family in South Carolina, which operates a major cotton production company, Pharr Yarns, Martin nevertheless launched his own sideline business, Gulfstream Trading, to access and market genuine WISICA cotton.

Mr. Carstarphen put his ideas and plans at the disposal of the major cotton growers and it went something like this: Let us form a joint venture company in which both the growers and the marketing and distribution company (Gulfstream) have shares. This was a radical idea in that Mr. C. was offering more than just a fixed price per pound of cotton lint. For the first time, cotton farmers could earn profits at the end of the production cycle, where the vast majority of the profits are made.

Mr. Carstarphen had already spent a lot of his own money in developing the Carstarphen brand of 100% cotton products, like shirts, socks and sweaters (yes, warm sweaters) and had been promoting his brand at major trade exhibitions. He had already picked out the companies to make the products (not in Barbados) and he even got some of his items displayed in expensive catalogues distributed in the United States.

In short, Mr. Carstarphen brought to the table a genuine understanding of his industry, and a vision for where WISICA cotton could go. Of course, he had a vested (if you will pardon the pun) interest, but he was willing to bring regional cotton growers into the big picture, not only in Barbados, but also in Jamaica, where cotton is still grown.

Now, whenever a manufacturer or distributor from a large company wants to find a local distributor here, they are seen as a prize worth winning, if they have good products. The majority of the big firms in the region are distribution firms. When the shoe is on the other foot, and the Caribbean becomes the source of the raw material but has a chance to get involved as a shareholder in the distribution end in the U.S., there is deep suspicion.

The number of negative comments I have heard from persons involved in the local cotton sector about what Carstarphen wanted is appalling. He was suspected of having the worst ulterior motives. One reason for this was that Mr. Carstarphen wanted Gulfstream to have the exclusive right to buy all of the cotton produced by the shareholding growers, even if Gulfstream did not use it all for its own products. That would have given Mr. C. the power of broker of one of the world’s rarest and most expensive commodities.

Given the current situation of cotton piled up in warehouses, would that have been so bad?

By the way, why is all that cotton just sitting there? I read in the Nation that somebody was being blamed for not spraying pesticide on it or something. What a lousy excuse.

I was told directly by the former CEO Lorna Garner (whose contract was not renewed after the first year), that the cotton company had decided to keep its cotton because it was working on developing its own range of clothing and other products, some in conjunction with the Spoerry company and the rest for local fashion designers to use. It was building up stocks for the day when all of the tests were done and production would start. In other words, management chose not to sell the cotton on the regular markets. Pesticides – phooey! Always blame somebody else when your plans go awry.

When I heard the change in plans, which essentially amounted to an Anything-But-Carstarphen policy, I shuddered. Here we go again.

The only trouble is, they haven’t worked. Not that they couldn’t, in neither a textbook sense, nor that we are dumb. Look, this is a tough business and there are many global players, all of them way ahead of us. How much time can we afford for our learning curve, which is what we are on right now, although still at the bottom of the arc. Why do we want to do everything? To prove what? That we can?

Martin Carstarphen’s proposal was the best and most credible ever to be offered to local cotton producers. In my opinion, that is. If there was good reason to believe he wanted too much power, then he should have been told that and a compromise worked out. Look at the compromise they have struck in order to save the CSME. And contracts don’t have to go on forever.

Of course, not owning any cotton fields, I don’t have any vested interest, and I readily acknowledge that. So I will take all of the criticism in good faith from my cotton-owning friends. And as I listen to their friendly complaints, I will contemplate their cotton resting comfortably, if unprofitably, in a lonely warehouse somewhere near those cotton fields back home.