CottonConnect Trains Farmers in Sustainability, Best Practices and Business
CottonConnect is one among a number of organizations that hold the key to successful cotton farming, establishing a supply chain and maintaining relationships around the industry which supports some 350,000 livelihoods worldwide. It teaches people to succeed and thrive, and to do no further damage to the environment while increasing their profits and ability to support one or more families. It helps those people establish sustainability programs, good labor practices, irrigation systems and business practices, all of which add to the well-being of communities as a whole.
In a new mission statement, CottonConnect has laid out guidelines for all of the above, designed to address knowledge levels of all individuals in the cotton industry, from landowners to pickers, ginners, and manufacturers.
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It explains the advantages of offsetting climate change with regenerative farming and makes recommendations on how to go about it or jump on with an operation already in existence whose damage needs to be rolled back.
Called the Insights Paper, the statement uses last summer’s floods in Pakistan as a foundation for the program and an example of what could be remedied. Some 1,500 people were killed and there was $30 billion worth of damage, not to mention the ripple effect of interruptions in supply chains, food networks and farm production that will take a great deal of time to recover from.
Working on the Indian subcontinent for a decade, CottonConnect maintains that rescue aid alone won’t solve the problem. What’s needed is long-term support to rehabilitate their livelihoods in addition to infrastructure to mitigate disaster before it occurs. Farm communities need to build resilience, adopt technology, manage crops and livestock, learn entrepreneurship and practice sustainability. They need to shift gender norms and train both men and women so responsibility is shared.
According to CottonConnect, a first step in helping farmers is educating them in their ESG goals and seeing that they achieve them. This will occur when robust cotton and raw material supply chains are established. This will give brands confidence in a transparent and resilient system and its suppliers, almost guaranteeing long-term success of their relationships and therefore the well-being of the farmers and their families. Right now, the cotton industry accounts for 24 percent of all global textile production yet only 30 percent of the world’s cotton can be classified as sustainable. Increasing that is another of CottonConnect’s goals.
The organization helps facilitate supply chain relationships of all kinds in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China. During the 2021-2022 growing season, it trained 447,000 farmers in sustainable agricultural programs. It has a traceability program called TraceBale which can identify and track cotton from the source to the end of the supply chain. One of its core programs is called REEL Cotton (Responsible Environment Enhanced Livelihoods) which lays out codes of conduct and best practices in cotton, regenerative cotton and linen with excellent results for graduates of its training program. Profits for CottonConnect’s REEL farmers increased by 18 percent between 2021-2022.
Further, its sustainable agricultural programs have reduced chemical use by 16.6 percent, chemical fertilizer by 20.4 percent, and water use by more than 11 percent. Use of organic pesticides and fertilizers has led to a reduction of input costs by 35.7 percent across the Organic Farmer Training Program.
Eliminating these kinds of toxic substances reinforces the notion of improved health and safety indicators across the board. There have been vast improvements recorded in safety aspects, use of precautionary measures, use of PPE and installation of proper water, sanitation and hygiene facilities for workers. Brands and retailers can have confidence that health and safety is a priority in their supply chain.
