What are the key principles or criteria of the Regenerative Cotton Standard (RCS) of the Aid by Trade Foundation?
Inka Sachse: RCS unites the strong social, environmental, health and safety and smallholder focus of our Cotton made in Africa (CmiA) Standard, with a farmer community-focused approach towards the transformation to regenerative farming systems. Generally, RCS, as well as CmiA, target organised groups of cotton-producing family farmers around a so-called ‘Managing Entity’ (e.g., a cotton company), who trains and supports farmers, organises the material flow, and acts as the gateway for verification. To enable Managing Entities to engage with smallholder farming communities more actively, our partnering cotton companies have started participating in trainings with African People and Wildlife in Tanzania.
Apart from the soil health approach, on which the industrialised regenerative farming stakeholder community entirely agrees upon, RCS considers the importance of rooting the transformation in traditional farming knowledge. Traditional ways of farming must be respected, valued, supported, and combined with what science knows today in order to reach not just some kind of proof of impact, but true ownership in the farming communities. The approach is on the one hand very strategic and on the other, hands-on. Wherever possible, farmers can choose which practices suit them to improve their biggest challenges.
RCS evolves around 10 principles:
- Farm resilience is improved;
- Farming families’ livelihoods are improved;
- Transparency and fairness in co-operation are ensured;
- Decent working conditions are observed;
- Soil health is restored;
- Water resources are preserved;
- The climate is protected;
- The reduction and safe use of synthetic inputs are ensured;
- Biodiversity is enhanced; and
- Animal needs are respected.
The three enabling requirements: responsible management, community engagement, and combination of traditional knowledge and science, form the basis of each principle. RCS comes along with community business opportunities that support RCS-associated farming systems.
RCS is holistic: with a commercial focus on cotton; it includes the entire crop rotation, social criteria, as well as basic needs of farm animals.
So far, what have been your experiences in implementing the standard? What are the potential challenges in implementing the standard on a larger scale, and how can these challenges be addressed?
Inka Sachse: RCS has just been launched. We are currently discussing the piloting with several local partners e.g. cotton companies who organise and support small-scale farmers.
Each partner environment comes with their own strengths and weaknesses. Many of our current partners are already engaged in regenerative practices in one way or another, e.g., regarding agroforestry, cover crops, biochar production, or composting, or via supporting specific farmer group initiatives. With RCS, we’re systematising to value and continuously improve the already existing agronomic or training innovations.
We are building on 18 years of experience in the field in a smallholder context with the CmiA standard and are now ready to move deeper and further with our impact. We expect that the holistic approach (crop rotation surfaces, animal welfare, community engagement) will bring challenges in verification during the first phase but are piloting remote sensing technologies at the same time. So far, we have received great interest from existing and potential new partners, and they are excited to implement RCS.
