Wanted to share a project we did for one of our UK customers wherein we traced back the Organic cotton fabric which we made to the final 20 odd farmers who were involved in growing the cotton of that particular batch of women’s clothing we made for them in our GOTS certified and SEDEX audited stitching factory.

This project was basically to go deeper into our existing GOTS certified supply chain.

Cotton Traceability Project | Herbal Fab Blog

Though we are already working with GOTS certified setups only and we are too GOTS certified but hearing/reading about articles saying more Organic cotton is getting Exported than what is grown started raising questions in our minds too.

Also, after meeting a few ground level activists/NGOs/Farmers we got to know that cotton farming is not at all profitable in the current scenario and farmers are having a hard time everywhere, leading to high rates of suicides in farmer communities.

After a lot of research, we shortlisted a not for profit organization, working with tribal areas of Maharashtra, Telangana, and Orissa.

 

Main Highlights of working with this group,

  1. Working with only small and marginal farmers.
  2. Only rain fed regions and not irrigated regions thereby saving water.
  3. They are Organic as well as fair trade certified.
  4. They are paying approx. 30% premium to farmers even above the MSP (Minimum support price) set by the government.
  5. They have been recommended by a couple of ground level activists as one of the most authentic farmer producer companies doing real time organically.

Cotton Traceability Project | Herbal Fab Blog

We really believe farmers should get more respect/Fair pay the world over.

Deeper traceability to end farmers on our existing GOTS certified Organic cotton fabrics and if we can play a role by bringing a direct change in the lives of farmers was the motive of this Project.

We would love to do such projects again and rather want to switch to 100% traceable cotton but it has its own challenges too.

It requires a collective effort of farmers/manufacturers/Brands and needs involvement from the seed sowing stage to the yearly commitment of consuming the cotton grown.