Cotton LEADS Targets Global Brands, Retailers
December 30, 2013 In response to today’s challenging marketplace, the Australian and U.S. cotton industries have launched Cotton LEADS, a program that is aimed at textile brands, retailers, and manufacturers committed to sourcing cotton grown in a responsible and transparent manner. It is the mechanism by which we can demonstrate how cotton grown in Australia and the United States can help meet these requirements. It is designed to assist businesses along the supply chain with their sustainability goals, and is the first time that cotton industries in the two countries have joined forces to offer a responsibly produced cotton solution to the international market.
Cotton LEADS is only possible because of the unique dynamics of the Australian and U.S. cotton industries; both enjoy national-level oversight, regulatory enforcement and transparency of practices.
The industries in both countries have pioneered practices that have resulted in impressive, country-wide environmental gains over the past decade. Both nations also approach improvement on a national level. This includes national reporting and regulatory enforcement, but also facilitates the ability to collect data on a national level, including the national implementation of best practices.
Importantly, Cotton LEADS is not a competitor to other identity cotton programs, such as the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) or Cotton Made In Africa. Both Cotton Australia and Cotton Incorporated are members of the Better Cotton Initiative, and are committed to making BCI work. The reality is that the success of the BCI program will result in a stronger worldwide market for cotton, and the founding members of Cotton LEADS see it as complementary to these other worthwhile initiatives.
Ultimately, we are all committed to providing the supply chain with greater volumes of responsibly grown cotton, to ongoing improvement, and to the transparency of processes and metrics. However, while programs like BCI focus on farm-by-farm certification, Cotton LEADS applies to all in the cotton supply chain in Australia and the United States.
Cotton LEADS is founded on five core principles:
- Commitment to the social, environmental, economic, and regulatory factors to produce world-class cotton.
- Recognition that sustainable and responsible cotton production requires continual improvement, investment, research, and sharing of best practices information among growers and industry.
- Understanding that leading change in responsible and sustainable cotton practices will be most effective when implemented in collaboration with farm, regional, national, and international programs.
- Belief in the benefit of working cooperatively with programs that seek to advance responsible and sustainable cotton production in an effort to keep global cotton competitive in world fiber markets.
- Confidence in a cotton identification system that ensures traceability from farm to manufacturer.
Principles aside, there is also a positive supply-side story behind Cotton LEADS, the timing of which is near perfect.
In recent years, supply hasn’t been sufficient for brand owners seeking responsibly produced cotton. Cotton LEADS provides an immediate source for these brands and clothing manufacturers (Australia and the United States provide roughly 17% of global cotton production).
While it is easy to see how Cotton LEADS works for brand owners and manufacturers, there are also advantages for farmers. The biggest advantage is continued access to global markets – now, and into the future. It is inevitable that world demand for sustainable, responsibly grown fibers will increase at the expense of fibers that can’t make such claims.
By launching the Cotton LEADS program, Cotton Australia and its allies have created a mechanism to immediately meet the demand for responsible fibers while also ensuring Australian cotton growers and the industry can sell into what will become an increasingly competitive future market.
More to the point, it will cost Australian cotton growers nothing to participate in Cotton LEADS, thanks in large part to the important stewardship work the industry has done in the past decade to make our industry the cleanest and greenest producer in the world.
All cotton produced in Australia and the United States is automatically placed under the umbrella of Cotton LEADS. This is a country-wide approach; no additional work or financial investment is required of growers to participate.
There will also be wider global impacts to the Cotton LEADS program that will go beyond the adoption of the initiative by worldwide brands and manufacturers. The initiative’s founding membership is committed to funding programs to help educate growers from around the world in responsible cotton-production practices. Australia’s cotton industry has been doing good work in this area for decades, and Cotton LEADS will allow brand owners, manufacturers and others in the supply chain to participate in these very worthwhile programs and other projects.
The founding Cotton LEADS partners have also begun a dialogue with major cotton-growing nations around the world, and we hope to be able to invite these nations to join the program in the future.
For more information about Cotton LEADS, please visit www.cottonleads.org.
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