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Better Cotton Renews Strategic Partnership in Greece 

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Governance Partners
Photo credit: Better Cotton/Raisa Ayres Moesch and Alvaro Moreira. Location: Thessaloniki, Greece, 2023.

Better Cotton has announced the renewal of its strategic partnership1 with the cotton sustainability initiative ELGO-DOV in Greece. 

Since 2020, ELGO-DOV’s AGRO-2 Integrated Management Standard has been recognised as equivalent to the Better Cotton Standard System (BCSS), enabling farmers certified against AGRO-2 to sell their cotton as ‘Better Cotton’. 

In the 22/23 cotton season, 15,096 farmers attained an AGRO-2 certificate from ELGO-DOV, producing 100,549 metric tonnes of Better Cotton, representing around one third of the country’s production for the season. 

ELGO-DOV and the cotton farmers it supports have demonstrated a strong commitment to the production of more sustainable cotton. Our continued alignment and collaboration send out a powerful message that, together, we can drive further progress across the country.

Alan McClay, CEO at Better Cotton

Greece is Europe’s largest cotton producer with more than 50,000 farms supporting the livelihoods of more than 100,000 farmers and farm workers. 

Following ELGO-DOV’s success in aligning its field-level requirements with Better Cotton’s updated Principles & Criteria (P&C) v.3.02, the strategic partnership renewal will be will be fully implemented by the 2025/26 season. 

Better Cotton requires Strategic Partners to periodically reassess and, where necessary, realign their standards with the BCSS to ensure that their objectives remain consistent and that they too evolve to continually support the needs of cotton farmers. 

Following the renewal of our partnership with Better Cotton, we are pleased to express our appreciation for being part of such a significant global initiative. Greek cotton is cultivated in full compliance with the stringent environmental and labour regulations of the European Union, harvested and ginned through fully mechanised processes. This crop plays a vital role across the regions of Greece where it is grown.

Mary Spentzou, Director of Certification and Standardization at the Hellenic Agricultural Organization (ELGO-DIMITRA)

We welcome the continuation of our collaboration and look forward to achieving further progress, in close cooperation with Better Cotton, for the benefit of the entire cotton supply chain.

Prodromos Ousoultzoglou, President of the PanHellenic Union of Ginners and Exporters

1 Better Cotton Strategic Partners operate equivalent sustainable cotton programmes that align with and are benchmarked against the Better Cotton Standard. 

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