Cotton

The Walmart Foundation announced it has provided a $2,000,000, three-year grant to the Soil Health Institute's (SHI) U.S. Regenerative Cotton Fund (USRCF) to scale activities of the project and expand the initiative to Alabama and South Carolina.

Better Cotton has joined the Partners’ Conference of the Aird for Trade focused on building a more resilient cotton sector. Jointly organised by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Trade Centre (ITC), the event focused cotton’s contribution to mitigating climate change, reducing poverty, enhancing food security, and the creation of jobs, especially for women and youth.

The Cotton Association of India (CAI) has released its May estimate of the cotton crop for the season 2021–22 beginning from 1 October 2021. The association has further reduced its cotton crop estimate for the 2021–22 season by 8.31 lakh bales to 315.32 lakh bales of 170 kg each from its previous estimate of 323.63 lakh bales of 170 kg each.

Cotton made in Africa (CmiA) has once again achieved record levels of supply and demand. New and existing clients are seeking to purchase greater amounts of cotton verified through CmiA and CmiA Organic. A total of 600 million CmiA textiles were brought to market, more than doubling Cotton made in Africa’s volume from the previous year.

As cotton costs touch historic highs, there seems to be no solution as the supply-demand imbalance is playing the pricing dynamics. But with India being one of the top-most cotton producing and cotton textile exporting countries, the government needs to take a serious view and seek a long-term solution.

Primark's Sustainable Cotton Programme trains farmers on using fewer chemical pesticides and fertilisers and less water, thus lowering input costs and improving profits for farmers. The retailer has now announced that it will train an additional 125,000 smallholder cotton farmers in more sustainable farming methods in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by the end of 2023.

Last week, Control Union, one of the world’s largest certifiers of organic cotton, announced that it would no more certify cotton, among others. The entire certification process apparently was too much of a balancing act, Control Union sources tell texfash.com.

The latest IPCC report is clear in its message: that the time to act is now. The world can halve emissions by 2030, and all sectors—including the textiles-fashion industry—have a role to play. Textiles, in fact, figure significantly at five places in the 2913-page report.

Traceability all the way to the cotton farm remains a challenge. Yet, cotton is a critical raw material for the garment and footwear sector and its cultivation may involve negative human rights impacts. In this context, how should brands implement due diligence when it comes to cotton? Can sustainability standards play a role? The second in a series.

Cotton cultivation takes place in a rural context and the agricultural sector is quite remote from the realities of the fashion industry and on which brands often feel that they have limited influence. The cotton value chain is a long and complex one. How can one ensure that due diligence regulations will not inadvertently exclude smallholder cotton farmers from global value chains? The first in a series.