An effective assurance system is an essential part of any sustainability programme. Assurance refers to the measures put in place to ensure that something meets a certain performance level. Think of it as a quality check — there to make sure everything is running up to standard.
The Better Cotton farm-level assurance programme ensures that farms and farmer groups meet all the requirements of the Better Cotton Principles and Criteria (P&C) before they can be certified and approved to sell Better Cotton.
The Better Cotton Assurance Model
The farm-level assurance model is a critical component of the Better Cotton Standard System, which aims to improve livelihoods and economic development in cotton-producing areas and reduce the environmental impact of cotton production. It provides a roadmap for participating Producers to progress from baseline performance, to meeting the P&C Indicators and eventually achieving long-term improvement goals.
The main objectives of the assurance model are to:
Verify that cotton Producers have met the Indicators of the Better Cotton Principles and Criteria before they can be certified and approved to sell Better Cotton.
Provide a framework to ensure that Better Cotton Producers – once certified – continue to make progress against their continuous improvement priorities and receive adequate capacity-strengthening support.
Create channels for ongoing learning by sharing information back to Producers and/or Programme Partners that can help them identify improvement opportunities or compliance gaps.
Measure the sustainability performance of Producers and overall Better Cotton programme impacts through regular collection of field-level (Results Indicator) data.
What Makes Our Approach Unique
Better Cotton’s approach to producer monitoring and certification is unique from many other standard systems in two regards. Firstly, it aims to balance credibility with scalability and cost-effectiveness, through combining third-party certification with first and second-party monitoring. This includes monitoring visits from Better Cotton Country Teams, support visits by Programme Partners and regular self-assessments by Producers themselves.
Secondly, the model puts a strong emphasis on capacity strengthening and continuous improvement. Producers are required to focus on sustainability improvements in order to maintain their certification. First and second-party assurance focuses not only on compliance but also on identifying areas where further support or capacity strengthening is needed.
Farm Certification
As of January 2025, Better Cotton is a certification scheme. Therefore, producers going through their first audit to the Better Cotton Principles and Criteria will be certified under the P&C monitoring and certification requirements. Until 2028, licensees transitioning to certification may also be approved to sell Better Cotton and these processes are covered in the Assurance Manual for Licensees.
Gins are not covered within farm certification – for details of monitoring and certification of gins, all other supply chain actors and retail brands please click here.
Useful Resources
In the Better Cotton Assurance model prior to the 25-26 season, licenses are awarded at the level of individual Large Farms or at the level of Producer Units, covering all farmers within the Producer Unit.
Producers (Large Farms and Producer Units) receive a license to sell their cotton as Better Cotton under the condition that they meet all licensing requirements listed in the Assurance manual.
The list below contains all Producers (Large Farms and Producer Units) that are licensed to sell their cotton as Better Cotton for a specific harvest season (e.g., 2021-22). Licenses are issued for three years, and to maintain an active license a Producer must continue to meet annual requirements. In some cases, a license may be suspended after the harvest date (for example, the Producer fails to submit required results indicator data after harvest). In this case, the Producer remains eligible to sell the recent harvest as Better Cotton but will have their license suspended the following season. Refer to the Better Cotton Assurance Manual v4.2 for more information.
The list of valid license holders in Better Cotton countries is now made public, starting from season 2021-22. As licensing timings vary based on cotton seasonality across the different geographies, the list is regularly updated upon completion of licensing in a country. Please refer to ‘Date updated’ for the latest update date.
As Better Cotton is now a certification scheme, we will be publishing a list of active certificate holders here.
Better Cotton License Holders 2021-22
Better Cotton License Holders 2022-23
These documents are only to be used for licensees undergoing the surveillance process. For certificate holders, the appeals process is covered in the General Certification Requirements.
Better Cotton Appeals Procedure
Better Cotton Appeals Submission Form for Large Farms
Variations are requests for deviation from Better Cotton processes and derogations relate to a deviation from the Better Cotton Principles and Criteria. The process to apply for and for review of such applications is explained in the relevant document – Better Cotton Assurance Manual for Licensees and Better Cotton P&C monitoring and certification requirements.
Variations are submitted by Producers to Better Cotton using this form.
Derogations to the P&C are only considered in exceptional circumstances as per the below processes:
Better Cotton Active Derogation List
Credibility
Better Cotton is ISEAL Code Compliant. That means our system, including our Assurance Programme, has been independently evaluated against ISEAL’s Codes of Good Practice.
For more information, see isealalliance.org.
Learn More
For any enquiries, please use our contact form.
For information about the assurance model changes, please refer to our FAQs.
Find relevant Assurance Programme documents using the resources section.