Fashion Must Thwart ‘Irreversible’ Cotton Supply Chain Damage

Jasmin Malik Chua
·5 min read

If fashion brands and retailers don’t improve their relationship with their cotton supply chains, the damage to livelihoods, environments and future production “may become irreversible,” a new study warns.

And while there is no such thing as a net-zero fossil-fuel-based fiber, according to Tamar Hoek, senior policy director of sustainable fashion at Solidaridad Network, which authored the report in partnership with Doughty Consultancy, net-zero or even net-positive cotton is still a possibility.

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Even with textile-to-textile recycling efforts gaining steam, synthetic fibers are “not necessarily the best way to solve all the sustainability issues within textiles,” Hoek told Sourcing Journal. Repairing ecologically damaging farming practices—for instance, the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, which are among the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions during the production phase—also has greater potential to reverse soil damage and mitigate climate change than investing in a “greener” plastics pipeline, she said.

Then there are the farmers, which the international civil society organization has made a focus of its work. Many smallholder growers live in poverty because low cotton prices diminish their ability to adapt to production shocks due to drought, flooding or inflation, which in turn reduces their ability to ensure consistent or reliable yields.

“Brands and retailers should take the responsibility to first of all know where their cotton comes from, and when they know where it comes from, make sure that the cotton farmer earns a fair price for the cotton that they produce,” Hoek said. “We hear so often from brands, ‘Oh we don’t know where our cotton comes from.’ O.K., but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to solve the problem.”

Awareness is seriously lacking in the area, she said. Cotton isn’t a commodity that’s high up on most policymakers’ agendas because it isn’t a food crop. Nor is it without alternatives when it comes to dressing the world. Polyester continues to be the world’s most widely produced fiber with a 54 percent share of the market in 2022, according to Textile Exchange’s latest Materials Market Report. Overall, synthetic fibers made up 65 percent of global fiber production last year.

At the same time, farmers are sounding the alarm as their vulnerability to climate change is clear for all to see. A 2021 study commissioned by Forum for the Future revealed that all six of the top cotton-producing countries—Brazil, China, India, Pakistan, Turkey and the United States—will struggle with extreme weather such as flooding, wildfires, heat stress and drought, jeopardizing the fiber supply. The worst-effected regions are likely to be northwestern Africa, including northern Sudan and Egypt, and western and southern Asia, though few, if any, will escape the increased danger from at least one climate hazard under a worst-case scenario.

All this could plunge farmers into a death spiral. The effects of climate change could lead to shorter growing seasons, which results in less quality cotton and therefore less income. Rising temperatures and precipitation levels could increase the risk of invasive insect species and insect-transmitted plant diseases. Without the money to make improvements necessary to adapt to this changing milieu, farmers will just get clobbered over and over. Last August, a “monsoon on steroids” wiped out 40 percent of Pakistan’s cotton.

Hoek said that it’s important for different stakeholders to consider their roles in averting a potential crisis, not only for farmers but also for the cotton supply. Brands and retailers, she said, can step up with more responsible purchasing practices that invest in farmers on the ground beyond “pet projects.” Helping growers transition to regenerative agriculture with long-term offtake agreements, for instance, can boost their resilience to global warming while restoring the damage that conventional production methods have wrought.

Brands from Armani to Citizens of Humanity to J.Crew to Mango have kickstarted regenerative agriculture projects in the United States, Europe and Asia, but the output remains a fraction of the 26.2 million metric tons of cotton grown every year for textiles and fashion.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives that can provide “forums and interventions” that enable meaningful engagement, too, have a part to play, as do governments that can use public policy to repurpose agricultural subsidies to regulate agrochemicals, support living incomes and promote climate change adaptation.

“It’s interesting when you think about climate change; we make it the problem of farmers or factories or whatever—it’s everyone’s problem except our own,” Hoek said. “But brands will eventually want to sell products that need cotton and governments need to be incentivizing regenerative or organic cotton over conventional cotton, which is very chemical intensive and water intensive.”

The bottom line for Hoek is that if nothing changes, cotton farmers will not be able to produce cotton, “so then you just have textiles that are made out of synthetics.” And the clock is ticking.

“I think it would be nice if everyone in the value chain stopped focusing so much on collecting data, and just started doing something instead of hiding behind the fact that we don’t have enough information to be able to start fixing things,” she added. “We want to stress [to] brands and retailers [that they must] take the first step to make sure that they invest in their farmers directly.”