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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At the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in India this week, the organisation reaffirmed its commitment to supporting Better Cotton as it develops a carbon insetting framework to promote and incentivise sustainable agricultural practices.
Better Cotton first outlined its ambitions to establish an insetting mechanism at last year’s CGI meeting in New York.
Hillary Clinton with Better Cotton’s Chief Operating Officer, Lena Staafgard
At its most recent outing, in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, Better Cotton’s Chief Operating Officer, Lena Staafgard discussed the wealth of opportunities across India whilst acknowledging that farmers must be rewarded for delivering on Better Cotton’s climate mitigation targets.
Already, Better Cotton’s network in India has greatly benefitted from adopting more sustainable practices. In the 2020-21 growing season, for example, Better Cotton farmers reported on average 9% higher yields, 18% higher profits, and 21% lower emissions than their conventional cotton growing counterparts.
Still, underpinned by its comprehensive supply chain traceability system that’s scheduled to launch at the end of this year, Better Cotton believes insetting mechanisms can accelerate environmental and social progress, supporting smallholder livelihoods across its network.
In theory, the insetting mechanism would incentivise farmers to produce more sustainable cotton by facilitating the trade of insetting credits and offering rewards based on each operation’s credentials and continued progress.
Until now, it has been impossible to build a carbon insetting mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the cotton supply chain at scale due to a lack of traceability.
Farmer centricity is a key pillar of Better Cotton’s work, and this solution ties into the 2030 Strategy, which lays the foundation for a strong response to climate threats within the cotton value chain, and mobilises action for change with farmers, field partners and members.
Right now, Better Cotton is piloting its traceability system in the Gujarat and Maharashtra states.
With enhanced supply chain visibility, brands will learn more about where the cotton they source comes from and therefore be better positioned to reward sustainable practices via farmer repayments that incentivise further on-field improvements.
The CGI meeting in India – led by Secretary Hillary Clinton – was a huge success for Better Cotton as it conveyed its aspirations for further progress within the cotton sector.
It is obvious that by coming together with other commitment makers there is scope for more impact.
Lena Staafgard, Chief Operating Officer, Better Cotton
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
We are pleased to confirm the launch of a Better Cotton Programme in Uzbekistan. As the sixth largest cotton producer globally, this programme brings us one step closer to our vision of a world where sustainable cotton is the norm.
Uzbekistan’s cotton sector has come a long way in recent times. After years of well-documented issues of systemic forced labour, the Uzbek government, International Labour Organization (ILO), Cotton Campaign, civil society institutions and human rights activists have been successful in driving state-led labour reforms in the Uzbek cotton industry. As a result, Uzbekistan has successfully eliminated systemic child labour and forced labour in its cotton sector, according to recent ILO findings.
Driving more progress across the Uzbek cotton sector
Building on this success, Better Cotton believes that commercial incentives can help ensure that the newly privatised cotton sector continues to reform and meet international standards. The Better Cotton Programme in Uzbekistan has the potential to provide that incentive by linking cotton farmers to international markets and supporting them to continuously improve their practices.
Through implementation of the Better Cotton Standard System, we will provide robust and credible decent work monitoring systems that can demonstrate impact and results made on the ground. We will also introduce physical traceability, under which cotton from licensed farms will be fully segregated and traced through the supply chain. Any licensed Better Cotton from Uzbekistan will, at the present time, not be sold via the mass balance chain of custody.
Better Cotton exists to work in contexts with both environmental and social challenges. Uzbekistan’s cotton sector, government and the farms themselves have made enormous progress, and we are looking forward to building on this multi-stakeholder engagement and to drive further positive change across the sector.
Better Cotton CEO Alan McClay.
The Participating Farms
The International Finance Corporation and GIZ began piloting implementation of the Better Cotton Principles and Criteria in Uzbekistan in 2017. The pilots provided a strong entry point for our programme, with 12 large farms already benefiting from significant training, six of which have maintained participation. These are the same six farms now participating in the programme during the 2022-23 cotton season. All the farms were assessed against the Better Cotton Principles and Criteria by trained and approved third-party verifiers.
Farms with manual picking received additional decent work monitoring visits that focused on extensive worker and community interviews, along with management interviews and documentation reviews. This additional decent work monitoring looked specifically at labour risks due to the country’s past challenges. In total, nearly 600 workers, management and community leaders, local authorities, and other stakeholders (including civil society actors) were interviewed as part of our decent work monitoring. The findings of these third-party verification visits and the decent work monitoring were documented and discussed with technical labour experts and contributed to our enhanced assurance activities, which confirmed that no systemic forced labour was present on any of the farms. Like in all other Better Cotton countries, not all participating farms received a license this season. We will continue to support both the farms that received licenses as well as those who were denied licenses through our capacity building efforts so that they can continuously improve their practices, and are equipped to meet the core requirements of the Standard moving forward.
Looking Ahead
As we begin our work in Uzbekistan, we are concentrating on several key areas where progress still needs to be made. These include ensuring the effective implementation of labour unions and the appropriate use of worker contracts. We are energised by the progress that has been but do not expect our journey ahead to be without challenges. We will succeed together thanks to a solid foundation, strong partnerships, and commitment from all involved stakeholders.
We look forward to supporting the continuous improvement of Uzbek cotton production.
In the first of a series of articles on data and impact reporting, we explore what our data-driven approach to measuring and reporting on impact will mean for Better Cotton
Alia Malik, Senior Director, Data and Traceability, Better Cotton
By Alia Malik, Senior Director, Data and Traceability, Better Cotton
At Better Cotton, we are guided by a principle of continuous improvement. From piloting new farmer tools to our Principles and Criteria revision, we are constantly looking for new ways to best support cotton communities while protecting and restoring the environment. For the last 18 months, we have been optimising our approach to monitoring and reporting results and are happy to announce the development of a new and improved external reporting model that will deliver greater insights and transparency to our programme.
Field-level reporting up until now
Up until now, Better Cotton reported on the results of licensed farmers by gathering data and comparing their performance on specific indicators against those of similar, non-participating farmers, referred to as Comparison Farmers. Under this framework, we sought to determine whether, on average, Better Cotton Farmers did better than the Comparison Farmers in the same country during one growing season. For example, in the 2019-20 season, we measured that Better Cotton Farmers in Pakistan used 11% less water on average than Comparison Farmers.
This approach was appropriate in the first phase of Better Cotton’s journey, from 2010. It helped us build an evidence base for Better Cotton-promoted practices and allowed us to demonstrate results in just one season while we were rapidly scaling up the programme. However, as Better Cotton’s reach neared the majority of cotton producers in some countries like Mozambique, and in certain production regions of some countries, it became increasingly challenging to obtain reliable data for Comparison Farmers with similar growing conditions and socio-economic situations. In addition, as our organisation and Monitoring & Evaluation department has matured, we recognised that now is the time to strengthen our impact measurement methodologies. So, in 2020, we phased out the collection of Comparison Farmer data. We then faced delays in developing needed IT infrastructure due to the Covid pandemic, but in 2021 began the complex shift to a new analytical approach.
Tracking trends over time, with a suite of evidence and more context
Rather than reporting on results in one season for Better Cotton Farmers vs Comparison Farmers, in the future, Better Cotton will report on the performance of Better Cotton Farmers over a multi-year timeframe. This approach, combined with enhanced contextual reporting, will improve transparency and strengthen the sector’s understanding of local cotton-growing conditions and national trends. It will also help us determine whether Better Cotton Farmers are demonstrating improvement over an extended period.
Measuring results trends over time is especially relevant in the context of agriculture because of the many factors — some beyond farmers’ control like changing rain patterns, floods, or extreme pest pressure — that can skew a single season’s results. In addition to the enhanced annual results monitoring, we will continue to engage in targeted deep dive research to assess how and why we see the results we do and measure the extent to which the programme is contributing to them.
Ultimately, Better Cotton is committed to promoting and catalysing positive farm-level impact at scale and we’re in it for the long run. Over the last 12 years, we have built up programmes in partnership with dozens of national expert organisations, millions of small-scale farmers, and thousands of individual farmers in large farm contexts. This work happens in the midst of increasing climate change risks, unpredictable weather, and fast evolving policy landscapes. In our current strategic phase toward 2030 and as we work to establish traceability, we also commit to further increase our credibility through more transparent reporting to demonstrate where and how progress is being made and where there is still room for improvement.
Other changes we are making for improved reporting
In addition to the longitudinal approach, we will also be integrating new farm performance indicators into our reporting model as well as a commitment to country life cycle assessments (LCAs).
Farm Performance Indicators
We will incorporate new social and environmental indicators from the newly released Delta Framework. Instead of our previous eight results indicators, we will measure our progress on the 15 from the Delta Framework, plus others linked to our revised Principles and Criteria. This includes new indicators on greenhouse gas emissions and water productivity, among others.
Commitment to country LCAs
Better Cotton has taken a principled approach over the years to not conduct a global life cycle assessment (LCA) due to the numerous credibility pitfalls of using global LCA averages for measuring and claiming programmatic impact. However, the science behind LCAs for some indicators is sound, and Better Cotton recognises that for industry alignment it must adopt an LCA approach. As such, we are currently developing plans for country LCAs that are credible and cost-effective to complement Better Cotton’s multifaceted impact measurement efforts.
Timeline for implementation
2021: The transition to this new reporting model requires a more robust data gathering and management system. Better Cotton began investment in a major upgrade of its digital data management tools to enable this shift in our analysis and reporting approach.
2022: Considering the scale and reach of Better Cotton, the adjustment takes considerable time, and the new reporting model is still under refinement. Pausing our reporting this year is required to help us put this new system in place.
2023: We plan to launch a call for technical proposals for development of country LCAs in early 2023 and aim to have one to two country LCAs completed by the end of the year to complement our holistic reporting.
More information
Find out more about Better Cotton’s approach to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning:
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.
We are pleased to announce that our Senior Director, Data and Traceability, Alia Malik, has joined the International Cotton Association (ICA) as a new board member. The ICA is an international cotton trade association and arbitral body and was set up 180 years ago in 1841 in Liverpool, UK.
The mission of ICA is to protect the legitimate interests of all those who trade cotton, whether buyer or seller. It has more than 550 members from around the world and it represents all sectors of the supply chain. According to the ICA, the majority of the world’s cotton is traded internationally under ICA Bylaws & Rules.
I am delighted to join the board of one of the oldest organisations in the sector. Trade is crucial to driving demand for more sustainable cotton, and I am looking forward to contributing to ICA’s work
Alia Malik, Senior Director, Data and Traceability, Better Cotton
Comprising 24 board members, the new board “continues to represent the ICA’s global membership across all sectors of the supply chain and builds on its commitment to engage the entire global cotton community.”
Better Cotton’s Nathanaël Dominici and Lisa Ventura
As COP27 draws to a close in Egypt, Better Cotton has been closely monitoring policy developments related to climate adaptation and mitigation, hoping countries will reach the goals developed under the Paris Agreement. And with a new report from UN Climate Change demonstrating that the international community’s efforts remain insufficient to limit average global temperature rises to 1.5°C by the end of the century, there’s no time to lose.
Lisa Ventura, Better Cotton Public Affairs Manager, talks to Nathanaël Dominici, Better Cotton’s Climate Change Manager about a way forward for climate action.
Do you think the level of commitments set out at COP27 is serious enough to achieve net zero by 2050?
Emissions must be reduced by 45% by 2030 (compared to 2010) to meet the Paris Agreement targets. However, the current sum of national contributions to reduce GHG emissions could lead to a 2.5°C increase, or even more in numerous regions, especially Africa, with major consequences for billions of people and the planet. And only 29 of 194 countries have produced more rigorous national plans since COP 26. So, more effort is needed to mitigate climate change, with significant action in developed countries.
Similarly, more action is needed on adaptation, with vulnerable countries and communities increasingly on the frontline of climate change. More funding will be needed to help reach the US$40 billion funding target by 2025. And there must be consideration given to how historic emitters (developed countries) can help to provide financial compensation and support where their actions have caused significant or irreparable damage around the world.
Which stakeholders should be at COP27 to ensure real progress takes place?
To meet the needs of the most affected groups and countries (for example women, children and indigenous people), it’s vital to enable sufficient representation of these people at the talks. At the last COP, only 39% of those leading the delegations were women, when studies consistently show that women are more vulnerable than men to the effects of climate change.
The decision not to allow protesters and activists is controversial, particularly given recent high profile climate activism in Europe and elsewhere. While on the other hand, lobbyists from damaging industries such as fossil fuels are increasingly present.
What should be prioritised by decision makers to ensure sustainable farming is used as a tool to address the climate crisis?
The first priority is to agree on a GHG accounting and reporting framework for agricultural value chains actors in order to track and ensure progress. This is something that is taking shape thanks to the guidance developed by SBTi (Science Based Targets Initiative) and the GHG Protocol, for example.Alongside other ISEAL members, we are collaborating with Gold Standard to define common practices for calculating GHG emissions reductions and sequestration. This project aims to help companies quantify the emission reductions that result from specific supply chain interventions like sourcing certified products. It will also help companies report against their Science Based Targets or other climate performance mechanisms. This will ultimately drive sustainability at a landscape-scale by encouraging the sourcing of commodities with improved climate impact.
We need also to remember that, historically, agriculture has not been sufficiently explored at COPs. This year, organisations representing some 350 million farmers and producers published a letter to world leaders ahead of COP27 to push for more funds to help them adapt, diversify their businesses and adopt sustainable practices. And the facts are loud and clear: 62% of developed countries do not integrate agriculture in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and globally, only 3% of public climate finance is currently used for the agricultural sector, while it represents a third of global GHG emissions. Moreover, 87% of public subsidies for agriculture have potential negative effects for the climate, biodiversity, and resilience.
This must change. Millions of farmers worldwide are facing the impacts of the climate crisis and must be supported in learning and implementing new practices to further mitigate their impact on climate change and adapt to its consequences. The floods in Pakistan most recently highlighted the need for action, together with severe drought in many countries.
Recognising these challenges, last year Better Cotton published its Climate Approach to support farmers to face these challenges but also to bring to the fore that sustainable agriculture is part of the solution
So, we’re glad to see that there will be a dedicated Food and Agriculture pavilion at COP27, and a day focused on the sector. This will be an opportunity to explore sustainable pathways to meet the growing population’s need for food and materials. And also, importantly, to understand how we can best direct financial support to smallholders, who currently receive just 1% of agricultural funds yet represent a third of production.
Finally, it’ll be fundamental to understand how we can combine climate considerations with protecting biodiversity, people’s health and ecosystems.
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)
At the beginning of October, Better Cotton’s Pakistan Regional Member Meeting took place in Karachi, Pakistan – the first in-person in the country since the end of COVID-19 restrictions. The theme of the meeting was “Climate Change Mitigation: Towards 2030″ and attracted some 200 attendees.
Lena Staafgard, Chief Operating Officer at Better Cotton, participated virtually and shared the Better Cotton 2030 Strategy. Hina Fouzia, Pakistan Country Director at Better Cotton, shared Pakistan country updates focusing on the current situation after the heavy floodings.
“We aimed to bring members together and provide a platform for different sector stakeholders working towards the common goal of climate change mitigation. I am hopeful we were successful in getting the best practices shared among the attendees”
Hina Fouzia, Pakistan Country Director at Better Cotton
Many interesting topics around climate change and supply chain resilience were discussed during the meeting. Adam Kay, Chief Operating Officer of Cotton Australia, shared important insights from cotton production in Australia, also including its challenges. Marcelo Duarte Monteiro, Director of International Relations for ABRAPA (Brazilian Cotton Growers Association), spoke about the ABR certification process and the environmental footprint of cotton produced under ABR certification. At the end, Romina Kochius, Project Manager Textiles, GIZ, presented how to combine the three dimensions of sustainability in the textile and garment industry.
The 2022 Pakistan Regional Member Meeting was sponsored by Mahmood Group & Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC).
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.
With our partners, we are pleased to launch the Delta Framework, a common set of environmental, social, and economic indicators to measure sustainability across the cotton and coffee commodity sectors.
The Delta Framework was developed in collaboration with Better Cotton’s cross-sector partners over the past 3 years, with the goal of producing a more harmonised way of measuring and reporting on the progress of farms participating in sustainable commodity certification schemes or other sustainable agriculture initiatives.
“Better Cotton is proud to have initiated and coordinated this cross-sector collaboration, which brings together expertise from across the agricultural sector. The Delta Framework is making it easier for the private sector, governments and farmers to report effectively on sustainability progress, leading to improvements in the quality of support and services provided to farmers, including better financing and government policies.”
Better Cotton CEO, Alan McClay
Together, the cross-sector programme agreed on key sustainability indicators and guidance materials that were extensively tested by the Project participants and other stakeholders. As a result, eight sustainable cotton standards, programmes and codes (members of the Cotton 2040 Working Group on Impact Metrics alignment) signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which they commit to align on Impacts Measurement and Reporting. Each member has committed to identifying an individual timeline for integrating relevant Delta indicators into their own monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems over time. The framework also provides an opportunity to develop cross-sector services to respond to farmers’ concerns and challenges, while making it easier to report progress.
The Delta Framework is an important reference and guidance for sustainability standards on key indicators that they can use to track and demonstrate their contribution to sustainability impacts. As attention for sustainability grows, it is becoming even more critical for all organizations working in sustainability to be able to communicate effectively about the difference they make, and the Delta Framework will be an important common reference for sustainability standards in this regard. Through this project we’ve recognized that an indicator framework isn’t a static thing. As the Delta Framework gets used, we are learning about further refinements and improvements that will keep it relevant in the future, and Delta Framework partners and ISEAL will continue to explore how to build on the Framework. It will be important for sustainability standards to see an interest in the data coming out of use of the Delta Framework by industry and other stakeholders. If there’s a clear demand for that information, that will provide an important incentive for sustainability standards to invest in the developments needed to fully integrate the Delta Framework in their performance measurement systems.
Kristin Komives, ISEAL
“The Delta Framework bridged the gap between the data collected by downstream supply chain actors and the information received by farmers. Beyond developing a framework for private and public supply chain actors to collect data and report on sustainability outcomes in an aligned manner, farmers in the pilots also received actionable recommendations and were able to improve their practices”
George Watene, Global Coffee Platform
“I found the recommendations from the project practical and useful. In fact, the recommended amount of fertilizers was lower than the amount we were using; with my family, we adopted more sustainable practices by reducing synthetic fertilizers and increasing organic ones. I know that adopting these practices will strengthen the health of soil on our plot”,
Coffee farmer who participated in the GCP pilot in Vietnam
“Through the work of the Delta Project, the major sustainable cotton standards have made significant progress towards adopting a common core set of indicators to report against. The implications of this are huge: once implemented, it enables these standards to tell a common narrative, backed up with evidence, about the positive impacts (as well as the reduction of negative impacts) that sustainable production creates. This will help to increase uptake by brands needing to make comprehensive and reliable sustainability claims to consumers and investors about the products they sell. Forum for the Future is proud to have partnered with the Delta Project in reaching this significant achievement.“
Charlene Collison, from Forum for the Future, Facilitator of the Cotton 2040 platform
The Delta Framework was made possible by a grant from the ISEAL Innovations Fund, which is supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO. The project collaborators include major sustainability standard organisations from the cotton and coffee sectors. The founding organisations are Better Cotton, the Global Coffee Platform (GCP), the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) and the International Coffee Association (ICO).
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