Page 18 – Better Cotton

COP27: Q&A with Better Cotton Climate Change Manager

Joe Morphet on November 17, 2022

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.

What Does Climate Action Mean to You?

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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.

Find out more

Taking Climate Action: A New Climate Approach and Climate Target

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What Does Climate Action Mean to You?

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Better Cotton’s Farmer-Centric Approach to Regenerative Agriculture

Julia Thordsson on November 16, 2022

By Alan McClay, CEO, Better Cotton.

Better Cotton CEO, Alan McClay, by Jay Louvion

This article was first published by Sourcing Journal on 16 November 2022.

It seems regenerative agriculture is on everybody’s lips these days.

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.

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Insights from our Supply Chain Mapping Efforts

Julia Thordsson on November 15, 2022

Photo Credit: Better Cotton/Eugénie Bacher. Harran, Turkey, 2022. Cotton going through a ginning machine, Mehmet Kızılkaya Tekstil.

Nick Gordon, Traceability Programme Officer at Better Cotton

By Nick Gordon, Traceability Programme Officer, Better Cotton

Cotton can be one of the most challenging commodities to trace. The geographical journey of a cotton t-shirt can span three continents before it reaches the shop floor, often changing hands seven times or more. Agents, intermediaries and traders operate at every stage, providing fundamental services from assessing quality to linking farmers and other players to markets. And there’s no one clear path – cotton bales from different countries can be spun into the same yarn and sent to multiple different mills to be woven into fabric. This makes it challenging to trace the cotton in any given product back to its source.

To enable the physical tracing of cotton, Better Cotton is developing its own traceability capability through the existing Better Cotton Platform, set to launch in late-2023. To support this, we’ve created a series of supply chain maps to better understand the realities of key cotton trading countries. We’ve used data insights, stakeholder interviews, and the experiences of local supply chain actors to shed light on how things work in different countries and regions, and identify the key challenges to traceability.

Central to the programme will be our evolving Chain of Custody Standard (which is currently out for public consultation). This will prompt operational changes for manufacturers and traders alike. It’s vital the Standard acknowledges regional variation and is achievable for suppliers in the Better Cotton network. We’ll keep applying the knowledge and lessons we’re learning to ensure any changes meet the wants and needs of Better Cotton stakeholders.

What have we learnt so far?

Informal economies play an important role in Better Cotton producing countries

Photo Credit: Better Cotton/Eugénie Bacher. Harran, Turkey, 2022. Better Cotton bales, Mehmet Kızılkaya Tekstil.

It’s no secret that enabling traceability is more straightforward in larger, vertically integrated supply networks. The fewer times material changes hands, the shorter the paper trail, and the greater likelihood of being able to trace cotton back to its source. However, not all transactions are equally documentable, and the reality is that informal work acts as a crucial support mechanism for many smaller actors, connecting them with resources and markets.

Traceability should empower people who are already often marginalised by global supply chains and protect smallholders’ access to markets. Engaging with stakeholders and responding to their needs and concerns is a critical first step in making sure these voices don’t go unheard.

It’s important to create the right digital solutions

New, innovative technology solutions are available for use in the cotton supply chain – everything from smart devices and GPS technology on farms to state-of-the-art integrated computer systems on the factory floor. However, not all actors in the sector – many of whom are smallholder farmers or small to medium-sized businesses – have embraced technology to the same extent. When introducing a digital traceability system, we need to consider varying levels of digital literacy, and make sure any system we introduce is readily understandable and easy to use, while also fitting the needs of users. In particular, we’re conscious that the gaps are greatest at the early stages of the supply chain, among cotton farms and ginners, for example. Yet it’s precisely at these stages that we need the most accurate data – this is essential to ensuring physical traceability.

Better Cotton will be testing two new traceability platforms in an India pilot this year. Prior to roll out of any new digital system, capacity building and training will be crucial.

Economic challenges are changing behaviours in the marketplace

Photo Credit: Better Cotton/Eugénie Bacher. Harran, Turkey, 2022. Pile of cotton, Mehmet Kızılkaya Tekstil.

The impact of the pandemic, coupled with challenging economic conditions, are changing behaviours in cotton supply chains. For example, in light of fluctuating cotton prices, yarn producers in certain countries are replenishing stocks at a more cautious pace than others. Some suppliers are concentrating on long-term supplier relationships, or searching for new supply networks. Predicting how much customers might order is becoming less easy, and for many, margins remain low.

Amid this uncertainty, the opportunity to sell physically traceable cotton could offer a market advantage. So, in the same way that cultivating Better Cotton helps farmers to achieve better prices for their cotton – 13% more for their cotton than conventional cotton farmers in Nagpur, according to a Wageningen University study – traceability also presents a real opportunity to create further value for Better Cotton Farmers. For example, carbon insetting frameworks, underpinned by a traceability solution, could reward farmers for implementing sustainable practices. Better Cotton is already engaging with all stakeholders across the supply chain to understand the business case for traceability and identify ways to increase value for members.

Get involved

Better Cotton is currently revising its Chain of Custody Standard/Guidelines. The public consultation is now live and will conclude on 25 November 2022. Access the consultation, documents and related resources here.
Find out more about Better Cotton’s traceability work

Retailer and Brand Field Trip to Şanlıurfa, Turkey

Eugenie Bacher on November 11, 2022

Better Cotton Urges Leaders at COP27 to Show Support for Farmers on the Frontline

Julia Thordsson on November 7, 2022

Better Cotton has issued a stark warning to leaders during COP27: global leaders must not only strengthen their commitment but turn talk into action. They must ensure a just transition for everyone and prioritise climate justice for the world’s farmers and agricultural workforce.

Better Cotton calls for greater collaboration across the fashion sector and its textile value chains to drive greater transparency, advocacy, and action to support smallholder farming communities around the globe. The sector’s key players, including alliances, trade associations, brands, retailers, and governments, must continue to advance the goals of the Paris Agreement to avoid catastrophic climate and environmental tipping points. Better Cotton believes that climate mitigation and adaptation as well as a just transition are only possible if there is sustained investment in regenerative agriculture and sustainable farming.

Leaders must strengthen and accelerate climate interventions that support the world’s smallholder agricultural producers before further catastrophic climate change events change the course of many peoples’ lives.

Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns linked to climate change are likely to make cotton more challenging to grow in many regions. Expected increases in temperatures and the difference in their seasonal patterns could lead to a decrease in the agricultural productivity of some crops. Lower yields will therefore impact the lives of already vulnerable communities. The recent tragic floods in Pakistan illustrate how the cotton sector can be impacted overnight by extremes in weather patterns and affect the livelihoods of millions of people. According to McKinsey, the fashion sector must align with the 1.5-degree pathway over the next eight years and intensify its efforts to make agricultural practices more sustainable. If the textile industry does not address this, the 2030 emissions reduction targets will be missed.

Solutions already exist. Egyptian cotton farmers have been embracing and implementing the Better Cotton Standard as a tool to set metrics and establish more sustainable production practices in recent years. Since 2020, Better Cotton has been working closely with on-the-ground partners – the Cotton Research Institute and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO). They help to ensure that Egyptian farmers gain access to the knowledge and tools they need to adopt more sustainable practices and improve their livelihoods. Some 2,000 smallholder cotton farmers in the Kafr El Sheikh and Damietta Governorates of Egypt participate in the Better Cotton programme.

As part of Better Cotton’s bold strategy designed to deliver substantial environmental, social and economic impact across the cotton industry by 2030, it launched its climate change mitigation target in 2021. The target was set to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of Better Cotton produced by 50% by 2030 (from a 2017 baseline). Four additional targets covering soil health, pesticide use, smallholder livelihoods and women’s empowerment are expected to be announced in early 2023 with impact indicators providing robust metrics for tracking and evaluating against the baseline.

Since its formation in 2009 Better Cotton has had a significant impact on the sustainability of the world’s cotton production. For example, on average Better Cotton production had a 19% lower GHG emissions intensity per tonne of lint than comparison production across China, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkey, a recent study analysing data from three seasons (2015-16 to 2017-18) showed.

“We know that climate change poses a great risk to cotton farmers – with rising temperatures and more extreme weather events like flooding and unpredictable rains. We will help on the ground by incentivising farmers to embrace both climate-smart and regenerative agricultural practices, in turn helping cotton communities survive and thrive.”

Better Cotton is taking the lead in developing solutions for physical traceability enabling retailers and brands to make stronger sustainability claims related to the cotton content and provenance of their products, as well as a mechanism for farmers to be remunerated for their more sustainable practices.