Better Cotton is the world’s leading sustainability initiative for cotton. Our mission is to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment.
In just over 10 years we have become the world’s largest cotton sustainability programme. Our mission: to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment.
Better Cotton is grown in 22 countries around the world and accounts for 22% of global cotton production. In the 2022-23 cotton season, 2.13 million licensed Better Cotton Farmers grew 5.47 million tonnes of Better Cotton.
Today Better Cotton has more than 2,700 members, reflecting the breadth and diversity of the industry. Members of a global community that understands the mutual benefits of sustainable cotton farming. The moment you join, you become part of this too.
The founding premise of Better Cotton is that a healthy sustainable future for cotton and the people that farm it is in the interests of everyone connected with it.
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Photo Credit: Better Cotton/Florian Lang Location: Surendranagar, Gujarat, India. 2018. Description: Better Cotton Farmer Vinodbhai Patel is explaining to a Field Facilitator (right) how the soil is benefiting form the presence of earthworms.
Better Cotton has published a management response to a recently-published independent study carried out by Wageningen University and Research (WUR). The study, ‘Towards more sustainable cotton farming in India’, explores how cotton farmers who implemented Better Cotton recommended agricultural practices achieved improvements in profitability, reduced synthetic input use, and overall sustainability in farming.
The three year-long evaluation aimed to validate the impact of Better Cotton on agrochemical use and profitability among cotton farmers participating in Better Cotton’s programmes in Maharashtra and Telangana, India. It found that Better Cotton Farmers were able to reduce costs, improve overall profitability, and safeguard the environment more effectively, compared with non-Better Cotton Farmers.
The management response to the study provides acknowledgement and analysis of its findings. It includes the next steps that Better Cotton will take to ensure that the findings of the evaluation are used to strengthen our organisational approach and contribute to continuous learning.
The study was commissioned by IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, and Better Cotton.
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Better Cotton Management Response: Validating The Impact of Better Cotton on Cotton Farmers in India
This article was first published by Sourcing Journal on 9 December 2022
Improving farming starts with people. For cotton, that means smallholders: Ninety-nine percent of the world’s cotton farmers are operating on a small scale. And it is those smallholders that are most adversely affected by sustainability issues like poor soil quality, poverty, working conditions and the effects of the climate crisis.
As Alan McClay, CEO of Better Cotton, said during a recent conversation with Sourcing Journal sourcing and labour editor Jasmin Malik Chua, sustainable agriculture practices go hand-in-hand with contributing to viable livelihoods for farmers. Better Cotton is currently conducting a revision of its standard, with one focus being alleviating poverty among farmers and workers.
“We’re working to ensure that the shift towards climate-smart, regenerative farming and resilient communities is socially and economically inclusive for those literally millions of individuals concerned by this agricultural production,” he said. “Change can take a generation sometimes, and for some situations, a generation is far too long. We need to bring about rapid change as best we can.”
A study in two regions of India, conducted by the Netherlands’ Wageningen University, found that Better Cotton farmers received 13 cents more per kilogram of cotton, which averaged to a seasonal profitability of $82 per acre. “When you can increase yields and profitability, you’re obviously going to help the smallholders rise above the poverty line,” McClay said.
This focus on financial welfare can also contribute to a better position for women working in the cotton industry. Women, who are often dealing with lower wages, can be a key driver for improving sustainability, provided they have the right resources. One study found that just a third of women cotton cultivators in Maharashtra, India attended any training in 2018-19. But once women were given access to training, adoption of better farming practices rose by up to 40 percent.
“Everything is interconnected,” McClay said. “You pull one thread, and then you’re going to be causing effects across the chain. So you have to make sure you understand the complexity of the whole system.”
To understand the impact of the Better Cotton standard, the organization collects millions of data points from farms. It is also leveraging external assessments, partnerships with other institutions as well as digital and cloud-based tools to improve the reliability of its data. In India, a pilot with startup Agritask aims to create a “learning feedback loop” for farmers so they can make improvements based on data.
Physical segregation of Better Cotton between farms and gins has been in place up until now, but the need for increased visibility throughout the rest of the supply chain has grown as legislation makes ethical sourcing a requirement rather than a choice. As a result, the organization has embarked on an ambitious traceability program. Better Cotton’s current method of volume tracking through mass balance will likely be joined by new traceability chain of custody models that will increase the visibility of Better Cotton supply chains. In turn, this should make it easier for farmers to be rewarded for their sustainability improvements, such as remunerating them for carbon sequestration. Pilots are now underway in Mozambique, Turkey and India to test these new models along with assessing accompanying digital tools.
“Of all the agricultural supply chains, cotton is possibly the most complicated and the most obscure,” McClay said. “This will help shed some light across the supply chain.”
Watch this video to learn more about Better Cotton’s approach to social and environmental change and how it is measuring the impact of its standard.
The pre-summit hype is all around a ‘Paris moment’ for the planet’s dangerously overstretched ecosystems. Environmental groups are desperately hoping for a set of ambitious, globally agreed targets that will not only protect what biodiversity remains, but also restore precious ecosystems that have been lost.
It is a prescient, planet-saving goal. And it’s one that global agriculture needs to embrace as firmly as any. A staggering 69 per cent of wildlife has been lost over the last fifty years, with “changes to land use” (a euphemism for the extension of industrial agriculture) identified as the chief culprit of this dramatic decline.
As government negotiators gather yet again, therefore, it is imperative that land – and agriculture’s role in managing it – is foremost in their minds. How we use it, what we use it for, and how can we best conserve it?
Success or failure with regards to the future of the world’s land and its ability to sustain life is one determining factor: soil health. The earth beneath our feet is so ubiquitous that it is easy to take it for granted, but it literally provides the building bricks of life.
Alan McClay, CEO, Better Cotton
Just one teaspoon of healthy soil can contain more microorganisms than the total number of people alive today. These crucially important microbes are responsible for transforming plant residues and other organisms into nutrients – nutrients that then feed the crops that provide 95 per cent of the world’s food.
The headline images of today’s biodiversity collapse are all too evident: decimated forests, dried out rivers, expanding deserts, flash floods, and so on. What is happening underground is as bad if not worse. Decades of mismanagement and pollution have given rise to a massive degradation in the soil biome, which, if not stalled and ideally reversed, will persist in bringing land fertility close to zero and crops and other plant life to wholesale collapse.
Declining soil health
Photo Credit: BCI/Florian Lang Location: Surendranagar, Gujarat, India. 2018. Description: BCI Farmer Vinodbhai Patel is comparing soil from his field with the soil from a neighboring field.
Healthy soils are, in fact, widely credited with helping sequester carbon. And it is not only environmentalists and climate groups who are worried about soil health. Agricultural businesses are concerned too. According to the United Nations, two-fifths of the world’s soils are now degraded, while a significant minority (12-14 per cent) of agricultural and grazing land is already experiencing “persistent, long-term decline”.
Agribusiness does not have to wait for the inevitable hit to its bottom-line. Farmers in Pakistan, for example, tragically saw 45 per cent of all their cropland disappear under water after terrible floods in August. Droughts in California, meanwhile, have seen available farmland shrink by nearly 10 per cent this year, with lost profits calculated at US$1.7 billion. As for continental Europe and the UK, lack of rain is causing average annual farming losses of around US$9.24 billion.
Stemming the decline in soil health will not be easy, but a future of continued degradation and reduction in land fertility does not have to be inevitable. Soil science is advancing at incredible speed, offering an ever-greater understanding of how soil ecosystems operate and what contributes to healthy soils.
Alan McClay, CEO, Better Cotton
Sustainable agronomy and agricultural technology are also advancing at pace. Take the rapid development of biofertilizers in place of nitrogen-based mineral fertilizers, which increase soil acidity and harm microbial life when overused. The market for fertilizers made from fungi, for instance, is projected to grow in double digits in coming years, with valuations exceeding US$1 billion by 2027.
Important as scientific breakthroughs promise to be, many steps for effectively managing soil health are already well-known. Reducing tilling (no-till or low-till), use of cover crops, complex crop rotation, and rotating livestock with crops are just some of the practices proven to prevent erosion and improve soil biology.
All these approaches form part of the guidance and training that Better Cotton is currently providing to cotton farmers across the world. Under our revised principles, all Better Cotton farmers are also encouraged to develop soil management plans. Where relevant, these include a commitment to reduce their use of inorganic fertilisers and pesticides, ideally swapping them for organic alternatives.
Responsible soil management
Similar moves are afoot elsewhere. The US-based Soil Health Institute, for example, recently established a Regenerative Cotton Fund with the objective of incentivising farmers to implement progressive soil management techniques on over one million hectares of US cotton cropland.
At a farm level, approaches to soil management will inevitably differ. Soil type, climatic conditions, farm size, crop type, and a host of other variables will influence precisely what strategy farmers develop. Common to all, however, will be the integration of other sustainable practices, from steps to mitigate carbon emissions through to measures to protect water resources. Each feeds into the other.
As an organisation that exists to improve farmers’ livelihoods, it is our conviction that improving soil health will deliver for cotton growers as well as the planet.
Alan McClay, CEO, Better Cotton
The evidence base is still growing, but initial field trials show a clear connection between sustainable soil management and cotton’s yield attributes. For other crops, meanwhile, responsible soil management has been shown to increase average yields by up to 58 per cent.
Yield effects aside, there are also market trends to consider. Faced with growing consumer pressure, big brands are expressing ever greater interest in the social and environmental footprint of the raw material they buy. Brands such as Patagonia, the North Face, Allbirds, Timberland, Mara Hoffman, and Gucci are some of those in the US$1.3-trillion fashion industry now actively seeking out ‘regenerative’ fabrics.
With charges of ‘greenwashing’ so rife these days, it is essential to have robust mechanisms in place to back up soil-health claims. While many certification initiatives now exist, such as regenagri and Regenerative Organic Certified, there’s no authoritative ‘stamp’ as yet. For our part, we are in the process of developing formal guidance for Better Cotton farmers. Clarity here will not only help producers give buyers the assurances that they seek, but it will assist in providing alignment with other emerging standards in this space.
Strong as the logic is in favour of promoting soil health in global agriculture, old habits die hard. If industrial farming is to wean itself off environmentally damaging, short-term farming practices, a strong steer from government is needed. In fact, the inability of governments to act decisively is concerning. Most obviously, polluters need to be made to pay. More generally the markets need a level playing field to enable environmental initiatives to succeed. Equitable financial incentives, too, such as a recently announced US$135-million grant by the US and other international donors to expand fertilizer and soil health programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, are much needed.
As environmental delegates jet in for their next summit, be it in Montreal this week or elsewhere in the near future, a word of advice: look down – part of the solution is almost certainly right there under your feet.
Better Cotton is pleased to announce that we will host our 2023 Better Cotton Conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands as well as online on 21 and 22 June.
The conference will help to drive our ambitious mission and strategic direction onward whilst highlighting the important work and perspectives of others working on the same issues.
Attendees will have the opportunity to connect with industry leaders and experts to explore the most salient issues in sustainable cotton production such as climate change adaptation and mitigation, traceability, livelihoods and regenerative agriculture. In addition, we’re delighted to invite members to attend an Annual Member Meeting which we will host during the conference.
Save21-22 June 2023 in your calendars to join the Better Cotton community at this major event for stakeholders in the sustainable cotton sector.
A huge thank you to our 2023 sponsors. We have a variety of sponsorship packages available, please contact [email protected] to find out more.
2023 Sponsors
The 2022 Better Cotton Conference brought together 480 participants, 64 speakers and 49 nationalities.Read more
Stakeholder coalition to explore avenues for creating sustainable farming systems in Southern Chad
Better Cotton recently signed a multi-stakeholder Letter of Intent to participate in the landscape approach, developed with local stakeholders in Chad in conjunction with IDH. Through the partnership, the stakeholders intend to work towards improving the climate resilience of smallholder farmers in Southern Chad.
Sharing a common vision for sustainable, equitable, and socio-economic development of Chad’s Southern regions, the stakeholders will work together to design and implement a regional development plan following IDH’s Production – Protection – Inclusion (PPI) landscape approach.
This approach aims to create positive impacts for farmers and the environment through promoting and supporting sustainable production systems, inclusive land use planning and management, and the protection and regeneration of natural resources.
Cotontchad, with the support of IDH, is currently engaged in the Better Cotton New Country Start Up Process, in anticipation of starting a Better Cotton Programme in Chad, and embedding the Better Cotton Standard System (BCSS) in farming activities with thousands of small holder cotton farmers in Southern Chad
“We are very excited to begin this process with IDH and Cotontchad. Sustainable cotton is more in-demand than ever. Consumers want to know what commitments brands and retailers are making to protect the environment, mitigate climate change effects, and ensure responsible social practice. Through this process, we hope to ensure the resilience and longevity of the cotton sector in Chad by opening up new markets and increasing international collaboration whilst having a positive impact at field level.”
Lisa Barratt, Africa Operations Manager, Better Cotton
Better Cotton is actively reaching out to countries in Africa to explore collaboration opportunities and the potential to launch new country programmes. Implementing the BCSS ensures a commitment to sustainable farming practices that protect the environment, whilst also ensuring improved livelihoods for smallholder farmers. Furthermore, the BCSS aims to enhance positive impact on yields, soil health, use of pesticides and improved livelihoods of the farmers and also enables increased trade and improved access to international markets seeking sustainable cotton.
In fact, it is on the agenda at COP27 currently taking place in Sharm El-Skeikh, Egypt where WWF and Meridian Institute are hosting an event that will explore scaling regenerative approaches proving effective in different places around the globe. While Indigenous cultures have practiced it for millennia, today’s climate crisis is giving the approach new urgency. In 2021, retail behemoth Walmart even announced plans to get into the regenerative farming business, and just recently, J. Crew Group announced a pilot to pay cotton farmers utilizing regenerative practices. While there is not yet a universally accepted definition of regenerative agriculture, it centers around farming practices that restore the health of something most of us take for granted—the soil beneath our feet.
Soil is not only the foundation of farming that provides an estimated 95 percent of global food production, but it also plays a vital role in fighting climate change, as soil can lock in and store carbon, acting as a “carbon sink.” Better Cotton—the world’s leading sustainability initiative for cotton—has long been a proponent of regenerative practices, though. As buzz around the topic increases, they want to make sure that the conversation doesn’t miss an important point: regenerative agriculture has to be about people as well as the environment.
“Regenerative agriculture is closely linked to climate action and the need for a just transition,” said Chelsea Reinhardt, director of standards and assurance at Better Cotton. “For Better Cotton, regenerative agriculture is deeply connected to smallholder livelihoods. These farmers are most vulnerable to climate change and have the most to gain from methods that improve yields and resilience.”
Through the Better Cotton Programme and Standard System, which in the 2020-21 cotton season reached 2.9 million farmers across 26 countries, the organization is working to ensure that the shift to climate-smart and regenerative farming is socially and economically inclusive.
What does regenerative farming look like?
While the term regenerative agriculture means different things to different people, the core idea is that farming can give back to, rather than take from, the soil and society. Regenerative agriculture recognizes the interrelatedness of nature, from soil to water to biodiversity. It seeks to not just reduce harm to the environment and people but to also have a net positive impact, enriching the land and the communities who depend on it for generations to come.
What that looks like in practice for farmers can range depending on their local context, but it may include reducing tilling (no-till or low-till), using cover crops and agroforestry systems, rotating livestock with crops, avoiding or minimizing the use of synthetic fertilizers, and maximizing crop diversity through practices such as crop rotation and intercropping. While the scientific community does acknowledge that carbon levels in soils naturally fluctuate over time, these practices have been shown to increase the capacity to capture and store carbon in the soil.
In North Carolina, Better Cotton farmer Zeb Winslow has been reaping the benefits of regenerative practices. When he made the switch from a single grain cover crop, which he had used for many years, to a multi-species cover crop blend, he saw fewer weeds and greater soil moisture retention. He was also able to cut herbicide input by around 25 percent. As the cover crops begin to pay for themselves and Winslow reduces his herbicide input further, economic benefits are likely to be realized in the long-term.
As a cotton farmer from the previous generation, Winslow’s father, also named Zeb Winslow, was skeptical at first.
“In the beginning, I thought it was a crazy idea,” he said. “But now that I’ve seen the benefits, I’ve become more convinced.”
As Winslow said, it isn’t easy for farmers to move away from traditional farming methods. But in the last 10 to 15 years, great strides have been made in understanding what’s going on under the ground. Winslow thinks that as soil knowledge increases, farmers will be better equipped to harmonize with nature, working with the soil instead of fighting against it.
The Better Cotton approach to regenerative agriculture
With the help of on-the-ground partners, Better Cotton Farmers around the world adopt soil and biodiversity management plans, as outlined in the Better Cotton Principles and Criteria, that help them improve the health of their soil, restore degraded areas, and increase wildlife on and off their farms.
But the organization isn’t stopping there. In the latest revision of their Principles and Criteria, Better Cotton is going further to integrate key components of regenerative agriculture. Acknowledging the interrelatedness of soil health, biodiversity and water, the revised standard will merge these three principles into one principle on natural resources. The principle stipulates requirements around core regenerative practices such as maximizing crop diversity and soil cover while minimizing soil disturbance.
“There is a strong interconnected nature between regenerative agriculture and smallholder livelihoods. Regenerative agriculture leads to higher resilience, which in turn, positively influences farmers’ abilities to meet their basic needs over the long term,” said Natalie Ernst, Farm Sustainability Standards Manager at Better Cotton.
Through the Standard revision, a new principle on improving livelihoods will be introduced alongside a strengthened principle on decent work, which ensures workers’ rights, minimum wages, and health and safety standards are met. In addition, for the first time ever, there will be an explicit requirement for consultation with farmers and farm workers to inform decision making related to activity planning, training priorities and objectives for continuous improvement, which underscores the importance of farmer-centricity.
Looking further ahead, Better Cotton is exploring other ways to support access to finance and information that will give farmers and workers more power to make choices that they think are best for themselves and their families.
At the Clinton Global Initiative event in New York this September, the organization announced their intention to pioneer an insetting mechanism with smallholder farmers that would promote and incentivize better agricultural practices, including regenerative practices. Carbon insetting, as opposed to carbon offsetting, allows companies to support projects to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions within their own value chains.
Better Cotton’s traceability system, due to launch in 2023, would provide the backbone for their insetting mechanism. Once implemented, it would enable retail companies to know who grew their Better Cotton and allow them to purchase credits that go directly to farmers.
We see the fact of regenerative agriculture now being on everyone’s lips as a huge positive. Not only is the unsustainability of today’s intensive, input-heavy farming increasingly well understood, so too is the contribution that regenerative models can make to turning this around. The challenge going forward is to turn growing awareness into on-the-ground action.
Textile waste is a global issue. An estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles are disposed of annually, with just 12% of the material used for clothing being recycled. Many clothes simply end up in landfill, where some release greenhouse gases. So what can be done to ensure precious natural fibres for clothing are recaptured and put to good use?
In Queensland, Australia, a partnership between stakeholders including the state government, Better Cotton Strategic Partners Cotton Australia and Sheridan, circularity expert Coreo, clothing charity Thread Together and Alcheringa cotton farm is exploring the potential to turn old cotton clothing into nutrients for new cotton plants. Cotton industry soil scientist and project participant Dr Oliver Knox, who presented the project in a ‘disruptors’ session at the Better Cotton Conference in June, explains how…
What inspired you to address this issue?
In Australia, much of our soil landscape has low soil carbon, so anything we can do to feed and keep our soil biology alive will benefit us and the environment. It’s these microorganisms that drive the nutrient cycles we rely on to produce our crops, including cotton. We know that any leftover cotton fibre from the harvest breaks down in the soil between seasons. Meanwhile, we need action now to avoid clothing going to landfill, so we decided to explore whether end of life cotton products (primarily sheets and towels) could have the same impact, becoming a natural fertiliser for cotton.
Tell us how cotton clothing could help nourish the soil…
Within cotton products, cotton fibres have been spun into yarn and woven into fabric, so we need to assist the soil microbes in overcoming this ‘packaging challenge’ and understand the potential risk from dyes likely to have been used in clothing manufacture. Our trial at Goondiwindi showed that in all the soil where we applied cotton fabric, the microbiology responded positively. These microbes were effectively reacting to the cotton and breaking it down.
What have you done so far and why was collaboration important?
Circular economy projects always rely on collaboration between stakeholders. Having a diverse and passionate team behind this work with a wide range of skills has been essential in overcoming the numerous challenges involved. We sourced waste textiles from various sources, assessed and removed certain components, shredded them, overcame transport logistics issues, launched and monitored our trial, collated and dispatched samples, and pulled together reports.
Through our first trial, we monitored the impact of around two tonnes of shredded cotton on soil microbes on just under half a hectare, considering benefits such as carbon and water retention in soils and microbial activity. We also estimated that this trial offset 2,250kg of carbon emissions.
Importantly, we’ve confirmed it may be viable to scale up this approach, although there are still technical and logistics challenges to solve. That’s why this year we’re planning to undertake larger trials across two farms in two states, enabling us to divert ten times more textile waste from landfill this year. We’ll also be monitoring the soil and crops more closely with support from the Cotton Research and Development Corporation. It promises to be an exciting season.
What’s next?
We’ll continue checking that the breakdown of cotton will assist in promoting soil microbial function, encouraging water retention and managing weeds. We also want to be sure that we’re offsetting the potential methane production that would be associated with sending the material to landfill.
Longer term, we’d like to see this type of system adopted across Australia and beyond, and positive impacts for soil health and cotton yields and other soil health.
Dr. Oliver Knox is Associate Professor of Soil systems biology, University of New England (Australia)
Photo Credit: Better Cotton/Khaula Jamil Location: Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab, Pakistan, 2019. Description: Farm-worker Ruksana Kausar with other women who are involved in the tree nursery project developed by Better Cotton Programme Partner, WWF, Pakistan.
By Alan McClay, CEO, Better Cotton.
Better Cotton CEO, Alan McClay, by Jay Louvion
This article was first published by Reuters on 27 October 2022.
Starting with the bad news: the battle for female equality appears to be going backwards. For the first time in years, more women are leaving the workplace than joining, more girls are seeing their schooling derailed, and more unpaid care work is being placed on the shoulders of mothers.
So, at least, reads the conclusion of the United Nations’ latest progress report on its flagship Sustainable Development Goals. COVID-19 is partly to blame, as are the economic ramifications of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
But the reasons for female equality’s sluggish pace are as structural as they are situational: discriminatory mores, prejudicial laws and institutional biases remain entrenched.
Before we give up on the United Nation’s collective goal of equality for all women and girls by 2030, let’s not forget the achievement of some notable successes in the past. The route forward invites us to learn from what has worked (and continues to work) previously – and avoid what has not.
Sima Sami Bahous, executive director of U.N. Women, put it clearly when reflecting on the U.N,’s less-than-positive verdict: “The good news is that we have solutions… It simply requires that we do (them).”
Some of these solutions are founded on universal principles. UNICEF’s recently revised Gender Action Plan captures most: think challenging harmful models of male identity, reinforcing positive norms, enabling female participation, raising the voice of women’s networks, not passing responsibility onto others, and so on.
Yet, equally, each country, each community, and each industry sector will have specific solutions of its own. In the international cotton industry, for instance, the majority of those working in the field are women. In the case of India and Pakistan, female participation is as high as 70%. Decision-making, in contrast, is predominantly a male domain. Faced with limited access to finance, women all too frequently occupy the sector’s lowest-skilled and lowest-paid jobs.
The good news is this situation can be – and is being – changed. Better Cotton is a sustainability initiative that reaches 2.9 million farmers who produce 20% of the world’s cotton crop. We operate a three-tiered strategy based on interventions with a proven track record at progressing equality for women.
Step one, as always, starts within our own organisation and our immediate partners, since women (and men) need to witness an organisation’s rhetoric reflected back at them.
Our own governance has some way to go, and the Better Cotton Council has identified the need for greater female representation on this strategic and decision-making body. We’re developing plans to address this as a commitment to greater diversity. Within the Better Cotton team, however, the gender make-up skews heavily towards women 60:40, women to men. And looking beyond our own four walls, we strongly encourage the local partner organisations that we work with to ensure at least 25% of their field staff are women by 2030 recognising that these training roles have been predominately occupied by men.
Making our own immediate working environment more women-focused, in turn, supports the next tier of our strategy: namely, encouraging equality for all those involved in cotton production.
A critical step here is to ensure that we have as clear a picture as possible of the role of women in cotton farming. Previously, we counted only the “participating farmer” when calculating our reach. Expanding this definition since 2020 to all those who make decisions or have a financial stake in cotton production brought to light the centrality of female participation.
Equality for all also involves investing in the skills and resources available to cotton-producing communities. Over time, we have learned the critical importance of gender-sensitisation training and workshops in ensuring that our programmes fully address the needs and concerns of women cotton farmers.
An example is a collaboration that we are involved in with CARE Pakistan and CARE UK to look at how we can make our programmes more inclusive. One notable outcome is our adoption of new visual aids that help male and female participants to recognise inequalities in the home as well as on the farm.
Such discussions inevitably flag the structural issues that prevent greater female empowerment and equality. Culturally sensitive and politically charged as these issues can be, the abiding lesson from all successful gender mainstreaming in the past is that we ignore them at our peril.
We don’t pretend this is easy; the causative factors underpinning the inequality of women are deeply embedded in social and cultural norms. In some instances, as is well understood, they are written into legal coda. Nor do we claim to have got the problem cracked. Yet, our starting point is always to acknowledge the structural causes of female marginalisation and to take them seriously in all our programmes and interactions.
The U.N.’s recent assessment provides a stark reminder not only of how far there is still to go, but also how easy it is to lose the gains women have achieved to date. To reiterate, failure to achieve equality for women means consigning half the population to a second-tier, second-rate future.
Extending the lens more widely, women are integral to the delivery of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals’ vision of “peace and prosperity for people and the planet”. While only one of the initiative’s 17 goals is explicitly directed at women (SDG 5), none of the remainder can be achieved without meaningful female empowerment.
The world needs women to be empowered. We all want a better world. Given the chance, we can seize both and more. That’s the good news. So, let’s reverse this backward trend, which is undoing years of positive work. We’ve not a minute to lose.
A brand-new study into the impact of the Better Cotton programme in India, conducted by Wageningen University and Research between 2019 and 2022, has found significant benefits for Better Cotton farmers in the region. The study, ‘Towards more sustainable cotton farming in India’, explores how cotton farmers who implemented Better Cotton recommended agricultural practices achieved improvements in profitability, reduced synthetic input use, and overall sustainability in farming.
The study examined farmers in the Indian regions of Maharashtra (Nagpur) and Telangana (Adilabad), and compared the results with farmers in the same areas who did not follow Better Cotton guidance. Better Cotton works with Programme Partners at farm level to enable farmers to adopt more sustainable practices, for example, better managing pesticides and fertilisers.
The study found that Better Cotton Farmers were able to reduce costs, improve overall profitability, and safeguard the environment more effectively, compared with non-Better Cotton Farmers.
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Summary: Towards sustainable cotton farming: India Impact Study – Wageningen University & Research
Reducing pesticides and improving environmental impact
Overall, Better Cotton Farmers decreased their costs for synthetic insecticide by almost 75%, a notable decrease compared to non-Better Cotton Farmers. On average, Better Cotton Farmers in Adilabad and Nagpur saved US$44 per farmer during the season on synthetic insecticides and herbicides expenses during the season, significantly reducing their costs and their environmental impact.
Increasing overall profitability
Better Cotton Farmers in Nagpur received around US$0.135/kg more for their cotton than non-Better Cotton Farmers, the equivalent of a 13% price increase. Overall, Better Cotton contributed to an increase in farmers’ seasonal profitability of US$82 per acre, equivalent to about US$500 income for an average cotton farmer in Nagpur.
Better Cotton strives to ensure that cotton production is more sustainable. It’s important that farmers see improvements to their livelihoods, which will incentivise more farmers to adopt climate resilient agricultural practices. Studies like these show us that sustainability pays off, not just for reducing environmental impact, but also in overall profitability for farmers. We can take the learnings from this study and apply it in other cotton-growing regions.”
Alan McClay, Better Cotton CEO
For the baseline, the researchers surveyed 1,360 farmers. The majority of farmers involved were middle-aged, literate smallholders, who use most of their land for agriculture, with around 80% used for cotton farming.
Wageningen University in the Netherlands is a globally important centre for life sciences and agricultural research. Through this impact report, Better Cotton seeks to analyse the effectiveness of its programmes. The survey demonstrates the clear added value for profitability and environmental protections in the development of a more sustainable cotton sector.
Acute, unintentional pesticide poisoning is widespread among farmers and farm workers, with smallholder cotton farmers in developing countries particularly affected. Yet the full extent of health effects remains poorly understood.
Here, Better Cotton Council Member and Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK International Project Manager, Rajan Bhopal, explains how a ground-breaking app stands to capture the human impact of pesticide poisoning. Rajan presented T-MAPP at the Better Conference in June 2022 during a lively ‘disruptors’ session.
Rajan Bhopal speaking at the Better Cotton Conference in Malmö, Sweden, in June 2022
Why is the issue of pesticide poisoning largely invisible?
The term ‘pesticides’ covers a huge range of products containing varied chemistry, meaning the many signs and symptoms of poisoning can be difficult for clinicians to diagnose if they are not aware of the issue. In addition, many farmers suffer health impacts without seeking treatment, particularly in remote, rural areas, where communities lack access to affordable medical services. Too many cotton producers accept these effects as part of the job. And we know that where incidents are diagnosed by clinicians, they’re often not recorded systematically or shared with government ministries responsible for health and agriculture.
Existing health monitoring surveys can be challenging to conduct, analyse and report on. That’s why we’ve developed T-MAPP – a digital monitoring system that accelerates data collection and provides rapid analysis that turns data into accurate results on how pesticides are affecting farmers’ lives.
Tell us more about your new pesticide app
The T-MAPP app
Known as T-MAPP, our app makes data collection on pesticides poisoning more efficient, enabling field facilitators and others to collect comprehensive data on the products, practices and locations that are linked to high rates of serious pesticide poisoning. This includes detailed information farms and crops, use of protective equipment, particular pesticides and how they’re being applied, and health impacts within 24 hours of exposure. Once the data is collected and uploaded, T-MAPP allows survey managers to see analysed results in real-time via an online dashboard. Importantly, this knowledge can be harnessed to identify which pesticide products are causing poisoning and inform more targeted support.
What have you discovered so far?
Using T-MAPP, we have interviewed 2,779 cotton producers in India, Tanzania and Benin. Cotton farmers and workers are suffering widespread pesticide poisoning with significant impacts on wellbeing and livelihoods. On average, two in five had suffered pesticide poisoning in the past year. Severe symptoms of poisoning were common. Some 12% of farmers reporting severe effects that include, for example, seizures, loss of vision, or persistent vomiting.
What is being done with this information, or how could it be used?
It’s helping us understand the extent and severity of acute pesticide poisoning and find ways to tackle the issue. In some countries, regulators have used the app to monitor pesticides post-registration. In Trinidad, for example, certain pesticides could be banned for causing high rates of poisoning. Sustainability organisations are using the app to identify high risk practices and target their farmer capacity building efforts. In India, for example, the data has helped Better Cotton to focus an awareness campaign on the risks of pesticide mixtures. Elsewhere, similar surveys in Kurdistan led governments to taking action to prevent children’s exposure and involvement in pesticide spraying.
What is your message for brands and retailers?
Invest in understanding and addressing the health and environmental issues in the cotton sector, include misuse of pesticides, which are likely to be occurring in your supply chain. And by supporting high-quality capacity building programmes, you’ll be helping to protect farmers’ health, livelihoods and ability to cultivate cotton in the future.
Find out more
For more information on how Better Cotton addresses crop protection risks, visit our Pesticides and Crop Protection page.
Photo Credit: BCI/Florian Lang
Location: Surendranagar, Gujarat, India. 2018.
Description: An farm-worker is preparing a field with the help of a manual plough, which is drawn by bulls for cotton cultivation.
By Alan McClay, CEO, Better Cotton. This opinion piece was first published by Reuters Events on 9 March 2022.
Irreversible ecosystem collapse is looming. If nothing is done to stop it, farming systems face a potentially catastrophic future, with severe implications for society the world over.
This isn’t hyperbole. It’s the verdict of hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists, as recently expressed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report. The writing is already on the wall. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), over one third of the world’s soils are already degraded due to erosion, salinisation, compacting, acidification and chemical pollution. The result? An absence of the diversity of life that is integral to nourishing plants and crops.
The core idea of regenerative agriculture is that farming can give back to, rather than take from, the soil and society.
As every farmer knows, healthy soil is the foundation of productive agriculture. Not only does it help cycle nutrients and filter water, it helps increase resilience to climate change by returning carbon to the ground. Cue the new buzzword on the block, “regenerative agriculture”. From one day to the next, the phrase seems to be everywhere, from the mouths of climate advocates to the speeches of leading politicians. Not since the “Green Revolution” of the 1950s has a farming-related buzzword gathered so much pace so quickly. As ever, critics have not been slow in coming forward. Their arguments follow conventional lines. Some say the term lacks rigour – “regenerative”, “organic”, “sustainable”, “carbon-smart”, all spawn from the same woolly basket. Others maintain that it’s an old idea rehashed in modern clothing. What were the earliest agriculturalists of the Fertile Crescent if not regenerative farmers?
Such criticisms hide more than a little truth. The term regenerative agriculture can certainly mean different things to different people. And, yes, it does embrace concepts such as reduced tilling, crop rotation and cover crops that, in some cases, go back millennia. But to gripe about terminology is to miss the point. For one, the vagaries of definition are not nearly as great or problematic as some like to claim. The core idea of regenerative agriculture – namely, that farming can give back to, rather than take from, the soil and society – is hardly controversial.
Fuzzy terminology can confuse consumers and, worse still, facilitate greenwashing.
Secondly, farming techniques vary enormously, meaning specific methodologies are always going to be hard to pin down. Practices pursued by farmers in west Africa, where the soil is notoriously infertile, for instance, will be different from those adopted in India, where pests and erratic weather are chief concerns.
Thirdly, lack of complete consensus doesn’t necessarily lead to a complete lack of action. Take the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals; the specifics of each goal may not please everyone, but they please people enough to amass a huge amount of collective energy.
In a similar vein, fresh terms can refresh our thinking. A decade ago, conversations about soil health and crop yields tended heavily towards the technical. A little less fertiliser here, a little more fallow time there. Today, with talk of regenerative agriculture increasingly widespread, extractivist agriculture itself is now on the table for debate.
Of course, clear definitions are important. In their absence, misunderstandings can arise in practice that slow or even undermine the transition to more sustainable farming. Likewise, fuzzy terminology can confuse consumers and, worse still, facilitate greenwashing. In this regard, Textile Exchange’s recently published Landscape Analysis of regenerative agriculture marks a valuable and timely contribution. Built through dialogue at all levels of the farming community, it establishes an important set of basic principles that all major players can get behind.
We especially welcome the report’s acknowledgement of benefits beyond carbon storage and emission reductions – important as both certainly are. Regenerative agriculture is not a one-trick pony. Improvements to soil health, habitat protection and water systems are just some of the other ancillary environmental benefits it delivers.
We see the fact of regenerative agriculture now being on everyone’s lips as a huge positive.
Likewise, as an organisation committed to improving the livelihoods of millions of cotton producers, the emphasis on social outcomes is also to be applauded. As critical actors in the agricultural system, the voices of farmers and workers are fundamental to deciding how regenerative farming is framed and what outcomes it should aim for.
To reiterate, we see the fact of regenerative agriculture now being on everyone’s lips as a huge positive. Not only is the unsustainability of today’s intensive, input-heavy farming increasingly well understood, so too is the contribution that regenerative models can make to turning this around. The challenge going forward is to turn growing awareness into on-the-ground action. The issues that regenerative farming seek to address are urgent. At Better Cotton, we’re big believers in continuous improvement. Rule number one? Get out of the blocks and get started.
One key lesson we have learned over the last decade or so is that effective action won’t happen without an effective strategy to back it up. That’s why we encourage our participating field-level partners to establish a comprehensive soil management plan, spelling out tangible steps for improving soil biodiversity and preventing land degradation. Another crucial impetus to action is telling a convincing story. Farmers won’t transition from what they know on the basis of anecdotes and promises. Hard evidence is required. And, for that, investment in monitoring and data research is needed.
Fashions, by nature, move on. In the case of regenerative agriculture, expect definitions to be refined and approaches to be revised. As a basic concept of how we ought to farm, however, it is firmly here to stay. Neither the planet nor farmers can afford it otherwise.
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The Better Cotton Living Income Project: Insights from India
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