‘Certified’ Cotton Not Always ‘Sustainable’ Cotton; Brands & Retailers Must Raise Transparency Bar

The bottomline is profit. All said and done, the corporate will go for the cheapest and best. How can corporations reconcile both? Do you think there needs to be something like a sensitisation drive? What do you think is the way out? Make it a part of CSR or ESG, or what?
Tamar Hoek and Keith Tyrell: Paying a fair price for cotton and for textile products should be the first step. That should indeed be part of the overall policy of a company and a board level responsibility. If you read the paper 'Cotton and Corporate Responsibility', that accompanies the Ranking, the percentage of cotton in the final price of a product is so little. Increasing that price should not have a huge impact on the companies or consumers but has a huge impact on the improvement of the livelihoods of farmers.

If companies really want to change something, they need to invest in smallholder climate adaptation, update purchasing practices to ensure better pay for cotton producers, and become transparent on cotton sourcing.

Price is important, but those companies that focus solely on this are taking a very short-term—and risky—approach. Farmers will only grow cotton if it makes business sense; cotton is an annual crop and growers can switch to other crops, or can leave farming altogether. Climate pressure and poor returns are already making agriculture marginal for many and we are seeing an exodus of growers from the country to the cities seeking better livelihoods.

If brands want a stable and sustainable supply of cotton for the future they need to invest in their supply chains and make cotton attractive to growers—build long-term partnerships with them, support them to adapt to climate change and pay them fairly. This will benefit their bottomline too!

The world over there are traditional methods of farming, which have for centuries taken care of pests, rejuvenation of soil and hundreds of other factors. Yield was perhaps not as much. Is there no middle way that brings in the best of both to help even small scale farmers get the desired results? Don’t we need deeper research into those methods and how the fruits of modern science can be blended into those?
Tamar Hoek and Keith Tyrell: Agroecology is already here and delivering both in terms of farmer income and yield. PAN UK supports nearly 10,000 small scale organic cotton growers in Benin, and thanks to training and support they have very similar yields to their conventional neighbours, but make around 3x as much through lower input costs. Farmers don’t have to choose between their health, the environment and profits, it's perfectly possible to have all three.

A paper says: “…training is an integral factor to tackling cotton poverty. While some retailers, brands, or standards may arrange enough farmer training to gain certification, their success is often only measured in yield over one season, and not longer term profitability or resilience. High-quality training has been shown to both decrease production costs and increase incomes.” – What steps are being taken in this direction?
Tamar Hoek and Keith Tyrell: We need more attention for proper training and supporting farmers to make the transition beyond certification. Training that supports farmers throughout the year based on conditions that go beyond certification and towards real improvements, like increasing the living income, long term commitments, improving soil health for next year etc.

Within MSIs and standards there is more attention for supporting farmers to make the transition towards sustainable production and not just certification, training should focus on changing behaviour and practices for the long run. 

Ingredient branding is much in vogue now. Think Lycra. Why does the cotton industry not take it up as a key tool to reach out to consumers where the farmer, his/her field, his/her story is communicated to the end consumer? It will in the long run yield dividends when a more discerning Generation Alpha and Generation Beta will demand to know where the cotton comes from.
Tamar Hoek and Keith Tyrell: Interesting thought. So far, a lot of companies do not know where their cotton comes from, so cannot provide these stories to consumers. There are examples of initiatives that work with cases and stories of farmers, like the Organic Cotton Accelerator. If eventually cotton can be traced from the farm to the end product, these stories can accompany the product, and consumers can make better informed choices. Consumers should put pressure on brands and ask questions on where the cotton comes from and how the product was produced. And obviously buy sustainable.

The new 2023 rankings can also be seen as an Impact Report of the earlier rankings. Are you planning to change your campaign content or style so as to have a better impact? If these rankings were to be a document for introspection or even retrospection, what would you do?
Tamar Hoek and Keith Tyrell: The 2023 Cotton Ranking is already slightly different than previous years. We no longer give credits for good intentions. We want to see action from companies in sourcing certified cotton. While good policies and transparency are crucial to do things right, the only thing that in the end counts is if companies are buying all their cotton from certified sources. Apart from this other CSOs have ranked and researched companies on policy and transparency. We don’t want to duplicate that.

This year we also talk about certified cotton instead of more sustainable cotton. Standards and certification systems remain relevant market-based tools to drive sustainability in the cotton sector. However ‘certified’ cotton doesn’t always equal ‘sustainable’ cotton, and we wish to look more broadly for all the approaches that can drive sustainability in the sector.

So our message this year is on the recommendations and steps that companies can take to go beyond certified cotton.

Very important. Where do we go from here?
Tamar Hoek and Keith Tyrell: Summarised we want companies to

• Take responsibility for their value chain by investing in producers;
• Improve purchasing practices;
• Raise the bar on transparency;
• Make clearer performance demands from traders;
• Support Standards to add more value;
• Proactively engage with multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs);
• Create durable, recyclable, and circular products.