When the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol made its debut in 2020, it was with the goal of establishing what it described as a “new standard” in sustainable cotton, one that was underpinned by rigorous data capture, article-level supply chain transparency and a focus on continuous improvement across metrics such as water and land use, soil carbon and conservation, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions.
Three years, a life-threatening pandemic and climate challenges aplenty later, the Levi Strauss & Co., Ralph Lauren and Target-backed voluntary platform covers 1.7 million acres—nearly one-quarter of U.S. cotton acreage—with 975 growers enrolled across all 17 cotton-growing states. Its 2023 annual report, which it published this week, also revealed some promising numbers. Over the past year, Trust Protocol growers reported an aggregate soil loss of 2.6 tons per acre, or 79 percent less than a 2015 baseline group. The majority of them—83 percent—saw an improvement in soil organic matter levels. Water efficiency is up by 14 percent, energy use is down by 27 percent and greenhouse gas emissions 21 percent less than they used to be.
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For Daren Abney, who joined the Trust Protocol as executive director in July, what excites him most is being able to parse three years’ worth of field-level data and demonstrate trends. And while the program’s exponential growth is a “great success factor,” what drives the farmers he speaks to regularly in his home turf of Lubbock, Tex., is the tangible benefit they’re seeing from their efforts. Their yields, for instance, are 12 percent higher than the national average. Pushback is par for the course from farmers who are used to doing things a certain way, Abney said, but the visibility the scheme has been able to give them, in a regionally relevant way, has been critical to its acceptance. So is collaborating with trusted partners like the Soil Health Institute that can work with growers to implement practices that make the most sense in their specific soil and weather contexts.
A key pillar of the organization is its Climate Smart Cotton program, a five-year initiative, launched in 2022, that provides participants with additional benefits, including technical and financial support, for incorporating soil fertility-enhancing practices such as planting cover crops, no or minimal tillage and integrated pest management. There isn’t a widely accepted regenerative agriculture standard, Abney said, but the additional metrics that Trust Protocol tracks—minimizing soil disturbance, continuously covering bare soil, maintaining living roots in soil and maximizing diversity with an emphasis on crops—are showing a similar upward trajectory. In 2023, for instance, 22 percent of Trust Protocol acreage adopted reduced tillage and 63 percent embraced no-till. Another 70 percent implemented cover crops, 86 percent practiced crop rotation and 92 percent incorporated a nutrient management plan.
The Trust Protocol seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.14 million metric tons throughout the initiative, or the equivalent of 4.2 million bales of Climate Smart Cotton.
One thing that has struck Abney, who previously worked at Lenzing and Better Cotton, is that U.S. growers have been welcoming of the program because it was built with the U.S. industry in mind, with the support of the likes of the National Cotton Council of America, Cotton U.S.A. and Cotton Incorporated. The market is hungry for the kind of third-party verification it offers as well, something that it may not have been excited about a decade ago. The financial incentives for farmers, particularly those involved in the Climate Smart Cotton program, also help. Over the past season, the Trust Protocol disbursed $1.5 million in payments directly to growers.
“I think that’s getting attention for more growers across the U.S. to realize that there are advantages to introducing some of these practices,” he said. “And where we’re focused in the next three years is trying to scale that.” That goes for offtake agreements, too, since “making the connection” with brands is vital to the scheme’s continued success. As with any form of textile production, someone has to be willing to pony up for the end product for it to work.
American cotton has received a boost amid concerns about forced labor in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which contributes 90 percent of the country’s cotton. Ensuring that Trust Protocol cotton doesn’t lose its identity as it wends its way through the supply chain is a priority, as is finding partners that “meet the expectations” of the market today, including legislation such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA, which bars from the United States products made in whole or in part in Xinjiang. One of the program’s mill partners, Anhui Xinya New Materials Co., which is headquartered in China’s Anhui Province, was added to the UFLPA Entity List in December for its alleged involvement in state-sponsored labor transfers. The Trust Protocol immediately severed ties with the company, calling inclusion on the list a “violation of the code of conduct.”
Vetting is one aspect that the Trust Protocol is “focusing on evolving” in 2024 by incorporating the best-available technologies and services, “not just in the field but beyond the field into the supply chain,” Abney said. “It’s an area of focus that we absolutely have to have in order to be a credible program.”
But what the organization is, “at the heart,” is a field-level program, he added. It recently completed a public consultation of its principles and criteria. There are also working groups that zero in on regenerative agricultural objectives.
“Working with cotton growers to improve the environmental and social impact at the field level, having that translated to retailers and brands who want to tell that story to their consumers and stakeholders—that is in the scope of how we see the organization evolving,” Abney said.
