[T]he plantations of the three largest cotton growers - the US, China and India - alone account for 50 million acres, 42% of all agricultural land. In contrast, food crops amount to some 40 million acres and fuel crops to 32 million acres. In other words: It is the 'white gold', cotton, not fuel, that is in direct competition with food.

Tom Philpott takes issue with Ravasio's numbers but thinks her overall point has merit:

According to the UN's Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), global cotton production doubled between 1960 and 2001. In that period, some of the most hunger-prone countries on the planet shifted significant farmland to cotton for the global market, hoping to build wealth from a valuable commodity crop. ...