How to scale organic cotton
After testing and iterating our programmatic work over the last four years, we’ve learnt that these factors will be essential in growing the organic cotton market.
01.
Confirm the business case
Ensure there are strong business reasons for farmers and brands to go organic.
02.
Align the industry
To tackle big issues, like the integrity and supply of organic cotton, the industry has to agree on its ambition and collective action.
03.
Focus on organic rather than cotton
Finding markets for farmers’ other organic crops, such as pulses, maize, soy can increase their incomes and create more incentives to stay invested in organic. Organic practices build farmer resilience, benefit the soil and provide more opportunities.
04.
Commit to the long-term
The challenges on the ground are complex. The lack of enablers from the state and the lack of incentive for farmers who haven’t been receiving a fair value from organic show that the system is broken. Organisations have to stay invested for 7-10 years to overcome these challenges and see real improvement.
Success story
Improving farmers’ livelihoods
We’re working with Action for Social Advancement (ASA), an organisation that helps smallholder farmers to adopt organic farming practices, get access to seed and link to the market for their crop. All of which improve farmers’ livelihoods and farm productivity.
ASA set up nine farmer producer organisations (FPOs), made up of representative bodies of farmers in the programme, to support market negotiations and strengthen farmers’ bargaining power so they can drive the best economic value for their organic cotton.
Sowni Bai is a farmer in the village of Meghlakhali
who has worked with ASA. She says:
We heard about the organic farming but were not very sure about the processes and the results. However, when we realised that at least we would be free from the pressure of debtors who are at our doorstep almost daily, we thought it is worth a try. We are now enjoying the benefits of organic farming by way of additional income and feeling more secure."
The ultimate aim is for these FPOs to take over the organic certification process and to manage commercial transactions. This will build resilience in the community and reduce their dependence on grants.
- Through ASA, we’ve supported 25,000 farmers UP from 6,000 in 2015.
- The impact of the initiative is attracting other funders. In the next stage, another prominent funder will co-fund 50% of the project, investing approximately €500,000.
Insight
What doesn’t work?
One of our pilots, designed to train and certify 20,000 farmers in organic cotton cultivation, struggled at the start because the project was too ambitious and had too many components. It took time for our partner to build an understanding of the complexity of the situation and of farmers’ needs. Here’s what went wrong:
- The area selected was historically a cotton growing region. However, due to changing climate patterns and extreme weather conditions over the last three years, its suitability for cotton cultivation had reduced drastically.
- We amended the course by prioritising farmer engagement and building community trust as the priority of the programme. Our partner is now focusing on training and engaging smaller groups of farmers across four different sites that have been selected more carefully.
- We chose to inspire behaviour change by demonstrating the business case to farmers. However, weather pattern changes resulted in debilitating floods that wiped out the crop. This meant elements of the business case couldn’t be established or demonstrated.
- The partner did not perform a detailed enough feasibility study to understand if a project of this scale and dimension was achievable.
How we reacted:
- We amended the course by prioritising farmer engagement and building community trust as the priority of the programme. Our partner is now focusing on training and engaging smaller groups of farmers across four different sites that have been selected more carefully.
- Work is underway to educate farmers on organic practices and to demonstrate the positive impact of organic for the whole community. Brand visits to the area are also demonstrating the benefits of organic to actors along the supply chain. This has resulted in some brands making procurement commitments, and even putting in their own investment support to the programme of approximately €40,000.