The New Climate Positive Frontier

Positive Cotton in India, a new development for the world's largest cotton growing nation.

June 15th, 2022

Written by FibreTrace®

When 8-10% of the global carbon emissions are generated by the textile industry* and 25% of the world’s fibre is cotton**, it presents an undeniable opportunity for progress.

Good Earth Cotton® is the world’s first climate positive, traceable cotton - a modern regenerative farming program that delivers land restoration, enhanced soil and pasture biodiversity, water use efficiency, chemistry and synthetic amendment reduction, and presents farmers with additional value for their fibre.

The Australian developed program elevates the role of the grower, ensuring full participation in the future of the global textile industry.

Delight Group, and the Delight Health and Wellness Foundation, are taking a leadership role by partnering with Good Earth Cotton® and conducting the research and development necessary to learn from and adapt the program and principles in the world’s largest cotton growing nation, India.

1977 Indian cotton farms, spanning 3,689 hectares of land, commenced the journey of converting to Good Earth Cotton®.

The farmers have commenced this cropping season (MY 2021/2022) by digital mapping have soil sampling, data collection and GPS tagging to build a base analysis from which the Good Earth Cotton® program and principles will be reviewed and adapted to bring climate positive improvements to a smallholder farming system and Indian climatic conditions.

This program represents a first of its kind in India, where primary and site specific scientific data is captured at scale and verified across participating growers.

Following this season, soil sampling and data collection will continue next year and each year thereafter to review the progress toward regenerative cotton and climate positivity. It is anticipated that it will take three years (cropping seasons) for these growers to fully adopt the Good Earth Cotton® program.

Delight Group is one of India’s leading organic agricultural cultivators and traders - working from farm, to gin, through to spinning in the cotton sector.

Abhishek Doshi, Chief Executive Officer of Delight Group commented, “Delight Group has been built on the values of respect for people and planet, when we learnt about the progress being made by Danielle and David Statham on the Good Earth Cotton® program in Australia and realised a strong sense of shared values, we were eager to lead the research and development necessary in India to adapt practice change and result not only in climate positive outcomes, but also provide Indian farmers an opportunity to enhance their yield and livelihoods - this program ensures growers are full participants and beneficiaries of a better cotton industry and healthier planet”.

Photo credit: David Hutton

Participating Good Earth Cotton® farmers will report primary impact data on an annual basis. Danielle Statham, Co-Founder of Good Earth Cotton® said, “We have spent over 10 years on our properties in Australia investing in agronomy, carbon science, and ongoing research and development to deliver the Good Earth Cotton® program - we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to connect with Abhishek and the Delight Group team and share a common ground on wanting to improve the climate positive and transparent outcomes of the global cotton industry - being able to share our research, development, knowledge, skill and practices across the global is phenomenal”.

Importantly, Good Earth Cotton® is backed by the power of FibreTrace® for complete transparency and real-time verification throughout the global supply chain. With the challenges facing the global cotton industry at present, from forced labour claims to queries around certification integrity, it is essential that any new cotton programs are backed with primary data and traceability.

FibreTrace® is an advanced transparency technology that connects physical markers with digital technology, providing brands and suppliers 20/20 vision of their supply chain at every step.

FibreTrace® allows growers to provide their brands, retailers, and consumers with a trusted guarantee that the cotton picked from their farm is 100% the same cotton that ends up in the final garment. Instead of verifying a chain of custody model that digitalises a paper system, FibreTrace® combines physical and digital traceability to ensure the physical input can constantly be verified against the digital blockchain, at every step of the global supply chain.

Patented FibreTrace® luminescent pigments are applied to the cotton during the ginning process and audited for integrity, and quantification, as they move throughout the global supply chain.

Delight Group will not only use FibreTrace® to verify and trace the Good Earth Cotton® production in India when ready, but as of late 2022 will be introducing FibreTrace® across certified Indian Organic cotton (organic premium, IC2 and NPOp).

It is forecasted that in 2023 across participating Australian and Indian farms +200,000 bales of Good Earth Cotton® will be produced, enough to create an estimated 160M garments.

For further information please contact Tess.Stutchbury@goodearthcotton.com.

* Reported by the UN Fashion Alliance, and substantiated by McKinsey Report 2020 Fashion On Climate.

** Textile Exchange preferred fibre report.

*** Cotton Production by Country report.