Page 24 – Better Cotton

International Women’s Day 2022: Insights from the Cotton Field with Anjali Thakur

Joe Morphet on March 8, 2022

Anjali Thakur, Producer Unit Manager, Ambuja Cement Foundation, India

Anjali grew up in an agricultural family and went on to achieve an undergraduate degree in Horticulture and an MBA in Agribusiness Management. She has always had a desire to work with and support farming communities and families, and this inspired her to pursue a career in this sector.

In her role as Producer Unit Manager at Ambuja Cement Foundation, Anjali works to build the capacity of the field-level staff who deliver trainings to Better Cotton Farmers. She works with them to develop demonstration plots where they can showcase best practice farming techniques, and she conducts research and baseline surveys to assess the effectiveness of the practices adopted by farmers.

What key challenges do you see in cotton production in India?

The use of pesticides is a challenge – we know that the excessive use of pesticides is harmful for the environment, to soil and water, and indirectly harmful to human health. I want to keep raising awareness among farming communities to use less and less pesticides and to find alternative natural methods of pest control. Achieving this motivates me in my role.

Can you tell us about any positive changes that you have seen on the ground?

I work with cotton communities on the ground, and I have seen lots of positive changes over the years. It’s easy to adopt new practices in the field, but positive changes in terms of long-term behavioural change is very important. For example, previously, farmers were not using personal protective equipment when applying pesticides, but now they are. And if I look 8 to 10 years back there was child labour, but in our project areas that has now been eliminated. The way the farmers want to learn and the way they are improving themselves inspires me.

Can you share some examples of the more sustainable practices that farmers are implementing?

There are lots of practices that contribute to sustainable agriculture. For example, to support better water conservation and harvesting, we work with farmers to install farm ponds and drip irrigation in their fields – we know that the efficiency of drip irrigation is 85% – 90% so this is contributing to reduced water usage and more sustainable practices overall. We also conduct soil and biodiversity mapping and then work with farmers to restore these resources on their farms. More broadly, I identify government schemes that may help to support farmers in implementing new practices and I look for opportunities to partner with universities and institutions to support relevant research studies into sustainable farming practices.

Tell us more about how you are supporting women in cotton?

When I started out in my role, I saw that many women were involved in farm labour, but they were not involved in any decision making. I wanted to share my knowledge with them to empower them. I started to deliver training sessions and raise awareness about the Better Cotton programme and other agronomical practices among female farmers and farm workers. The way they are learning new things inspires me. Before, they had limited knowledge of more sustainable practices, but now they know about pesticide labelling, how to encourage beneficial insects, and the benefits of wearing personal protective equipment, such as masks and gloves.

Are there any thoughts you would like to leave us with?

I live and work in a male dominated society – I see in the villages that many fathers do not let their daughters go and study higher education. My role is important in delivering training to women, as they then inspire and encourage one another, which opens up new opportunities for them. I see this driving change for future generations.

Read Q&A with Gülan Oflaz, GAP UNDP, Turkey

Read Q&A with Narjis Fatima, WWF-Pakistan

Meet the Women Leading the Change in Sustainable Cotton Farming: International Women’s Day 2022

Joe Morphet on March 8, 2022

This International Women’s Day 2022, we are placing the spotlight on the inspiring women who are using their expertise and passion to drive positive change in cotton farming.

Following this year’s IWD theme, this feature focuses on our aim to #breakthebias of agricultural extension services prioritising the needs of men and dominant groups over women and disadvantaged groups. One way we are progressing this aim is by actively supporting more women into field staff roles, where they can inspire cotton communities to adopt more sustainable practices.

We spoke with representatives from three Better Cotton Implementing Partners: Anjali Thakur, Ambuja Cement Foundation in India; Gülan Oflaz, GAP UNDP in Turkey; and Narjis Fatima, WWF-Pakistan to learn more about their work, how they are supporting women in cotton, and the changes they are seeing on the ground. These three women joined our Implementing Partner Meeting in January 2022 during a spotlight panel. The below interviews and video clips are extracts from that event.

Learn more from Anjali

Learn more from Gülan

Learn more from Narjis

We believe that a transformed, sustainable cotton industry is one where all participants have equal opportunities to thrive. In our 2030 Strategy we recognise our opportunity to tackle systemic inequalities and unequal gender relations to promote shared power, control of resources, decision-making, and support for women’s empowerment. We are committed to convening, inspiring, and influencing the wider industry to also take transformative action.

Our 2030 women’s empowerment impact target is focused on creating more opportunities for women like Anjali, Gülan, and Narjis. In collaboration with our partners, we are committed to increasing the proportion of women field staff, such as Producer Unit Managers and Field Facilitators, in our programmes. Field staff of all gender identities are critical to our mission. They are the people that make Better Cotton real for participating cotton communities. They travel long distances and work in challenging conditions to tackle difficult issues and inspire positive changes for the environment and local communities.

Women field staff are often better placed to meet the particular needs of women in cotton. By setting a target to increase the proportion of women field staff who make Better Cotton a reality, and developing new initiatives to meet the particular needs of these women, we believe that our programmes will become more impactful and more inclusive.

Learn more about Better Cotton’s approach to gender equality.

Learn more about Better Cotton’s 2030 Strategy.

In this year’s Better Cotton Council Election, we encourage women and those from underrepresented communities to apply for a leadership position on the Better Cotton Council. Better Cotton Members have until 15 March to submit their application. Learn more.

Better Cotton Council Election 2022: Submit Your Application Before 15 March

Joe Morphet on March 1, 2022

The deadline for Better Cotton Members to apply for a position on the Better Cotton Council is getting closer!

The Better Cotton Council is an elected board that drives cotton towards a truly sustainable future. The Council sits at the centre of the organisation and is responsible for our strategic direction. Together, the 12 Better Cotton Council Members shape the policy that ultimately helps to fulfil our mission: to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment.

In this year’s election, there is one seat open for election in each of the following Better Cotton membership categories: Civil Society, Producer Organisation, Retailer & Brand, and Supplier & Manufacturer.

This is a great opportunity for members to represent their area of the cotton supply chain, share valuable industry insights, and contribute to the delivery of Better Cotton’s 2030 Strategy, while being part of a multi-stakeholder governance body.

Interested candidates are invited to submit applications by 15 March 2022. All details and the election timeline can be accessed in the members’ area of the website.

Download the application package

Learn more about the Better Cotton Council and existing members here.

Understanding the Living Soil: There Really Is a Universe Beneath Our Feet

Joe Morphet on February 24, 2022

By Karen Wynne, US Programme Coordinator, Better Cotton
Karen is certified as a Soil Scientist and Classifier by the Soil Science Society of America.

You may think that below the ground there’s only dirt. Roots grow through it, and maybe an earthworm or two lives there. And do you ever wonder how plants get water and nutrients? Maybe they grab what they need from the soil and farmers top up the nutrients with fertilisers? Well, it may come as a surprise, but soil is quite a lot more complex than that.

There’s literally a whole universe beneath our feet.

The mineral soil, the silt, sand, and clay, even the roots, are home to all kinds of macro- and microorganisms (also known as the soil biome) that spend their time eating plant residues and each other, and in the process transform and store nutrients, and build soil structure. Just one teaspoon of healthy soil can contain more microorganisms than the total number of people on Earth. That’s amazing, right?

In fact, soil is a complex and living system that we hardly understand. Soil scientists call the earthy world of microorganisms the ‘black box’. We’re still gaining knowledge of these microbes and how they interact with each other, their environment and plants. DNA sequencing and other amazing scientific advances have transformed our capacity to understand more about this underground world, and faster than ever before.

Why it’s important to act on soil health now

Healthy, biodiverse soil is fundamental to thriving crops, cycling nutrients, and filtering water. Soil can also increase our resilience to climate change by returning carbon to the ground, and buffering the impact of drought and flooding. But today, humans have a greater impact on the landscape than any other force. Our soils have become so degraded and eroded from industrial and agricultural development, that they no longer contain the diversity of life that’s integral to nourishing plants and crops.

Within cotton farming, it’s vital that we encourage farmers to help create the best conditions for soil organisms to do their thing. That’s why healthy soils are a key focus for us at Better Cotton. We work closely with our on-the-ground partners and farmers to introduce effective, sustainable soil health practices. For example, maintaining continuous living roots creates a habitat to keep soil organisms active. Increasing the diversity of crops and cover crops builds diversity below ground too. Meanwhile, reducing tillage helps to protect the fragile underground ecosystem.

We also collaborate with scientists and agronomists worldwide to help gather and share knowledge to encourage progress across the cotton sector. This year, to make further progress, we’ll be launching a 2030 soil health target as part of our 2030 Strategy.

A thriving soil community

Here are a few of my favourite members of the soil community. Let’s look at the valuable role they play in creating healthy soils.

Earthworms are typically present in healthy soils. Darwin wrote the page-turner The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations of their Habits back in the 1800s. It was a bestseller. He tells us that earthworms can break down at least their weight’s worth of plant materials in a week, grinding them into a powder-like [compost], known as castings, that helps nourish the soil. Raising worms and farming their castings is a super low-tech system that produces stable organic fertiliser. This approach can easily be used on a small farm or even in an apartment. Worms don’t take up much space.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) form mutually beneficial relationships with plants. They have an extensive system of branches called hyphae that insert themselves into the actual root cells, extending the plant’s access to water and nutrients, especially phosphorus, far beyond the roots’ reach. In return, the fungus gets sugars from the plant. AMF also produce glomalin, a kind of glue that holds soil particles together and provides an ideal habitat. One scientist in British Columbia has written a book on how trees communicate and share nutrients through their roots and the fungal network that connects them. It’s amazing how different species cooperate.

Mycobacterium vaccae, a bacteria found in soils, has been shown to work as an antidepressant. They produce a fat that seems to counter stress-related inflammation in our bodies that can lead to depression. The connection isn’t completely understood yet, but this little bacterium may well have the ability to counteract our natural stress responses. Maybe that explains why I am happier with a little soil under my fingernails.

Dung Beetles are another helpful sign of healthy soils. They live in many different ecosystems on every continent, except Antarctica. The beetles feed on manure and, depending on the species, may transport it to their underground tunnel or roll it into a ball and bury it in the soil to lay eggs. And here’s a fun fact – they also orient themselves using the sun, moon and Milky Way as a guide.

And finally, soil enemies… There are plenty of pests and pathogens in the soil too, and these can pose a risk to healthy crops and people. An unbalanced ecosystem can result in the loss of predators of these pests. For example, nematodes (microscopic roundworms) can be pests, but predatory nematodes such as the Steinernema species can attack grubs in the soil, including common cotton pests like pink bollworm and armyworm. A well balanced soil biome helps maintain these beneficial species of nematodes and prevent outbreaks of cotton pests.

The good news is we have momentum. There’s more investment, more collaboration and outreach with farmers, and more communication on these issues. There are enough films about soil for a small film festival. There are a lot of smart and committed soil scientists out there asking all the right questions, farmers working together to share knowledge, and organisations like Better Cotton helping farmers to make changes without expensive lab tests or tools.

More and more, the farming community is realising that to create the best environment for a very dynamic system, we need healthy soils. And when farmers use practices that support the soil biome, they can often save money by enabling natural systems to do the work. If we can continue this democratic and cooperative approach, we should really make a difference.

For more information on how Better Cotton is promoting soil health on cotton farms, please read more here: https://bettercotton.org/field-level-results-impact/key-sustainability-issues/soil-health-cotton-farming/

Learn more

Is Regenerative Farming Just a Buzzword or a Blueprint For Restoring Soil Health?

Sustainability regenerative agriculture soil health

Supporting Farmers in Mali to Improve Soil Health

Capacity Strengthening soil soil health

What Is Soil Health? Better Cotton Launches New Soil Health Series

Sustainability impact soil health

What Is Soil Health? Better Cotton Launches New Soil Health Series

Joe Morphet on February 23, 2022

Soil is quite literally the foundation of farming. Without it, we could neither grow cotton nor support our growing global population. We know first-hand at Better Cotton that improved soil health can enhance productivity and yields, which also directly improves farmer incomes. Not only that, but many soil health management practices are also climate change mitigation measures. These measures stand to make a big impact when considering that global soils contain more carbon than vegetation and the atmosphere combined.

That’s why soil health is one of five impact targets that we are developing at Better Cotton as part of our 2030 Strategy, and an area we will be focusing our attention on over the coming weeks.

In our new Soil Health Series, we’re exploring the wonderful and complex universe beneath our feet, looking at why good soil health is so important and what Better Cotton, our partners and Better Cotton Farmers are doing to support healthy soils and the future of sustainable agriculture.

To kick off the series, we outline the five key factors that impact soil health. Learn more in the video above.

Look out for more content over the coming weeks, or visit our soil health webpage to learn more.

Learn more about Better Cotton and soil health

Take a look at the 2030 Strategy

Engaging the Market to Drive Impact in the Field: Q&A with Kmart Australia

Joe Morphet on February 22, 2022

Better Cotton brings people and businesses together across the cotton sector – to deliver a shared vision for the future of sustainable cotton. We focus primarily on supporting farmers on the ground. But it’s vital that we also drive demand for Better Cotton, in order to continue our growth and impact, firmly establishing Better Cotton as a viable commodity for farmers to grow and supporting them to improve their livelihoods.

In this blog series, we speak with three Better Cotton Retailer and Brand Members about the impressive progress they have made in their Better Cotton sourcing and how they are able to make advanced claims to their customers as a result. We’ll discuss how they communicate their Better Cotton progress with consumers in interesting and innovative ways. Third in the series is Kmart Australia. Since 2017, Kmart Australia has been a Retailer and Brand member of Better Cotton. The company operates over 200 stores across Australia and New Zealand.

Q&A with Lucy King, Sustainable Materials Manager, Kmart Australia

If you would prefer to listen to the audio of the Q&A, you can do so below.

In October 2020, Kmart – one of Australia’s largest retail brands, celebrated an important milestone with their customers since setting the ambitious goal of ‘100% more sustainably sourced cotton by July 2020’ back in 2017 as part of their Better Together sustainability program. Kmart launched it’s ‘100% sustainably sourced cotton’ brand campaign to celebrate that all of the cotton for Kmart’s own brand clothing, bedding and towels range is now sourced as Better Cotton, organic or recycled cotton. A significant amount of work was undertaken to ensure that Kmart had sufficient systems in place to measure and verify the progress made against its cotton commitment, and that all claims were credible and in line with Better Cotton’s Claims Framework and Australian Consumer Law, whilst keeping messaging simple and easy for customers to understand. Kmart had employed the use of the Better Cotton On-Product Mark, along with featuring cotton sustainability messaging in advertising, but to mark their 100% sustainably sourced cotton they developed a digital communications campaign to consumers.

Lucy, can you tell us a bit about Kmart’s cotton sourcing approach and your work with Better Cotton?

In 2017, Kmart set an ambitious commitment to source 100% of the cotton for our own brand clothing, bedding and towels ‘more sustainably’ by 2020, as part of our Better Together sustainability program. With partnerships playing a very important part of this program, we were one of the first Australian retailers to join Better Cotton and with strong leadership support, we set up a cross-functional project team to lead the rapid roll-out of Better Cotton across our global supply chain. In just three years, we managed to get all of our key cotton suppliers onboarded into the program and all of the cotton sourced for own brand clothing, bedding and towels range is now sourced as either Better Cotton, organic or recycled.

What have you learnt from when you began Kmart’s sustainability journey?

Transforming the way we work and source product as a large retailer is not easy and takes time. It involves working across multiple product categories, teams across six countries, and a global supply chain, but we’ve understood for some time that we have a responsibility to lead the way and with the right partners and level of leadership support, a clear project plan and the willingness of our teams and suppliers to do things differently, it is possible to drive meaningful impact. We still have a long way to go and the expectations from our stakeholders are only growing in this space, but we are committed to seeing this through and constantly evolving our approach to do better.

How did you arrive at your messaging for Kmart’s campaign?

Previously Kmart had done a lot of work in labelling cotton products with the Better Cotton logo and launching a TV Ad talking to our partnership with Better Cotton. This time around, as we were wanting to celebrate a significant milestone of achieving our ‘100% sustainably sourced cotton commitment’, we decided to go after an all encompassing ‘sustainably sourced cotton’ message as we felt this was a simple and easy message for the customer to grasp and it included all aspects of our sustainable cotton commitment – cotton sourced as Better Cotton (including Australian cotton), organic cotton as well as recycled cotton. Being a digital campaign comprised mostly of a video and social media assets, the messaging needed to be impactful, punchy and to the point, but the message also needed to be credible and water tight from a claims perspective. Given that the majority of our cotton has been sourced as Better Cotton and therefore via a mass balance system, we were careful to ensure that we didn’t make any claims that would mislead our customers into thinking that the products themselves physically contain sustainable cotton.

What consideration did you give to making sure that the campaign featured credible and transparent claims?

A significant amount of work has been undertaken in collaboration with our IT and sourcing teams over the years to ensure that we have sufficient systems and processes in place to measure and verify the progress made against our cotton commitment. When it came to developing the campaign messaging itself, we worked hard to find the right balance between developing bold, succinct and simple claims that are easy for customers to understand and suitable for digital assets such as video and social media content; yet ensuring that they were credible, in line with the Better Cotton Claims Framework and Australian Consumer Law. The sustainability and legal teams, as well as the Better Cotton team, were involved in every step of the process, providing guidance to our marketing team and agency along the way.

How important was it to bring the farmer voice, through Cotton Australia, into the campaign?

It was important to bring both the visuals of real-life cotton farms and the farmer voice, represented by our industry partner – Cotton Australia, into this campaign. Having their voice included in the campaign added credibility and provided a tangible illustration of what ‘sustainably sourced cotton’ means in practice. In this case, we were able to demonstrate that we are investing in and supporting the top 20% of growers in Australia who working and third-party audited to best practice farming standards.

What, in your experience, is the reception of customers to Better Cotton messaging like, and how has this evolved over time?

The campaign was received well by our customers who perceived the campaign to share new and different information, and indicated that they are hungry to learn more about what Kmart is doing in other areas of the business when it comes to sustainability. We can see through our ongoing customer research that customers awareness of Better Cotton and their recent purchases has grown over time – an indication that the Better Cotton labelling on cotton product in-store and online over the past two to three years is really starting to cut through. Our customer research also shows that a growing number of customers associate Better Cotton labelling with product that supports the future of workers in the cotton industry. This shows us that customers are starting to make the link between our investment in Better Cotton and the impact this has on the lives of cotton farmers both here in Australia and abroad.

At Kmart, we’re working to truly make everyday living brighter for our customers and so we wanted to use this campaign to reflect one of the areas we’re working on behind the scenes to protect our planet and improve the lives of cotton farmers both here in Australia and abroad, while retaining our ongoing focus on affordability and everyday low prices. It was an important moment for our brand to celebrate the impact we are making through our partnership with Better Cotton, whilst also sharing our new sustainability goals and plans for the future.

Q&A with Björn Borg

Q&A with George at Asda

Impact Report

Learn more about how Better Cotton brings together actors across the cotton supply chain to create a more sustainable future for cotton.

Read the report

Engaging the Market to Drive Impact in the Field: Q&A with George at Asda

Joe Morphet on February 17, 2022

In this blog series, we speak with three Better Cotton Retailer and Brand Members about the impressive progress they have made in their Better Cotton sourcing and how they are able to make advanced claims to their customers as a result. We’ll discuss how they communicate their Better Cotton progress with consumers in interesting and innovative ways. Second up in the series is George at Asda. Asda is one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains, and its clothing range, George was launched in 1990 – the first supermarket clothing brand in Britain.

Q&A with Jade Snart, Senior Sustainability Manager, George at Asda

If you would prefer to listen to the audio of the Q&A, you can do so below.

The company states that its George clothes are sold in over 560 stores and its online business serves over 800,000 people per week. As part of its ‘George for Good’ campaign, George at Asda has made a commitment to source 100% more sustainable cotton for their own-brand clothing and soft home textile products. They state that they are working with their suppliers to source more sustainable cotton through Better Cotton. In October 2020, the company launched a new sustainability-focused store in Middleton, UK. As well as offering refill stations for other products such as tea and pasta, recycling options, and second-hand clothing options, the store featured messaging about George at Asda’s Better Cotton sourcing commitments. On digital screens above the clothing racks, customers were able to see videos of Better Cotton farmers, while information boxes next to the clothes rack also provided more information on the company’s cotton sourcing approach.

Jade, can you tell us more about your approach to sustainability within George at Asda?

Sustainability has become business as usual for us at George, we set our ‘George for Good’ strategy back in 2018 and it is now part of everyone’s KPI’s to deliver it. Our trading teams have targets to meet in terms of meeting our public commitments on responsibly sourced fibres, and I am pleased to say that over 80% of our shop floor now uses responsibly sourced fibres. For us however, it is more than just the fibres we source, it’s how our products are produced and packaged, what happens to them at the end of life and what impact that might have on the environment. We work with a number of partners to help us deliver our strategy and Better Cotton has become an integral part of everyday sourcing for us.

You’re a relatively new sustainability team and have made a lot of progress in a short period of time. Can you tell us about the challenges you foresaw and how you overcame them to reach the point you’re at today?

The biggest challenge for us was the education piece, it was so important that our colleagues and suppliers understood why we have set the strategy that we have and why playing their part is so important to help us along the way. In the early days we spend time with all of our colleagues and suppliers, including colleagues outside of the trading functions as we believe that if we are to become a truly sustainable business, we need everyone to be on the bus with us too.

Commercially we have come across a few challenges with switching to responsibly sourced fibres along the way, but we took this in bitesize chunks to enable us to move forward with our strategy but without having to pass any of the cost onto our customers. The current focus for us is now moving on to educating our customers to understand what steps we are taking, why we are taking them and how they can also make small changes in their day to day lives that can make a huge difference collectively.

In 2020, you launched your first sustainability store, in Middleton, UK. Can you explain how Better Cotton featured within this store in your communications with customers?

Yes, that’s right, we launched our first ever sustainability store back in October last year, the store was a fabulous opportunity for us to showcase all the work we had been doing in the background but hadn’t been able to share with our customers before. We wanted to use the platform to talk about what responsibly sourced fibres really means and it was important for us to take it as far back as the field where possible. We used story telling boxes and videos of Better Cotton farmers in the field on our digital screens, this was a first for us and the feedback has been brilliant.

Why did you set this store up, and how was this received?

We recognised as a business that we didn’t do a very good job of telling customers about all the great initiatives we had been working on and driving through our business. Setting up this store gave us a platform to test different forms of communication, test new initiatives and really listen to what resonates with our customers the most. From a George perspective, customers and colleagues were really intrigued with the storytelling boxes and were keen to learn more. We spent time with our colleagues in store, sharing our strategy and educating them to enable them to be our ‘in store experts’, the feedback we received from them was phenomenal, they love being able to explain to customers what it was all about and why we are doing what we are doing.

Do you have any specific consumer insights regarding your Better Cotton information in the store and your communications?

The main feedback we received was via our colleagues who had been asked questions firsthand by customers in store. They said that was the first time they have been inundated with questions relating to anything other than product. Lots of customers wanted to understand more about Better Cotton and what it was all about and I truly believe that having the story telling boxes and the digitals screens really prompted customers to want to learn more.

You use digital screens to show footage of Better Cotton Farmers in store. Why was this important?

For us, it’s always been more than just on product marks, and we wanted to use this store to educate our customers more about what responsibly sourced fibres really means and how sourcing in this way not only has a positive impact on the environment but what it means to the farmers in the fields too.

What comes next?

We have taken some huge learnings from the Middleton store and still continue to do so. As a result of the trials in that store, we now have a constant ‘drumbeat’ of storytelling across our stores, this has been mainly executed on our digital screens within our stores and we continue to look at other ways that we can bring our customers along on this journey with us.

Learn more about George at Asda.

Q&A with Kmart

COMING SOON