Who made my cotton? Making the invisible visible

Making a pair of jeans is no small feat; in fact, it requires many steps. Not all of them are easily traceable or even visible. While the mills producing the fabric and the washing and dyeing businesses are on the radar — and the factories sewing the garments too, due to recent efforts — following the cotton is harder.

Denim industry insiders Ani Wells and Anne Oudard wanted to know more about the farm level where the cotton in our jeans comes from. Their question “Who makes our cotton?” turned into a multi-year research project, in which they investigated how cotton moves through global supply chains. They noticed that the actual cotton growers remain largely invisible and started looking into farm-level traceability, the barriers to transparency and the relationships shaping cotton production around the world. They published their findings in the report “Who made my cotton? Step 4: The farmer’s ecosystem,” which was released on 7th October.

Along the way, Wells and Oudard changed their one simple question into many, more detailed ones like ‘What does farm-level traceability actually mean?,’ ‘How much information already exists and where does it get lost?’ Also, what kind of understanding were they hoping to gain through traceability?

“Cotton production is far more than an isolated farmer in a field. It is an interconnected ecosystem of land, labour, finance, input suppliers, community organisations, cooperatives, traders and local institutions that collectively shape how cotton is produced. Understanding this wider system is crucial if brands hope to address environmental and social challenges rather than simply document them,” is one crucial realisation.

Cotton is communal

Another one is that the cultivation of cotton is a communal activity, not a singular one. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, and it certainly takes one to grow cotton. “In most producing regions, and for smaller farms especially, cotton is often brought together through farmer organisations, collection centres or intermediaries before reaching the gin. A bale therefore, often represents the production of an entire community rather than a single farmer,” state Wells and Oudard. “It is a beautiful thought, really. That cotton is communal,” they add.

For traceability that aims to be meaningful, this means that it cannot rely on identifying individual producers alone but has to take the collective structures into account through which cotton is grown and marketed. While gins, sitting at the intersection of farming and the textile industry, already collect much information and data like farmer identities, volumes, quality and transaction records, they do not provide farm-level information like costs, privacy implications and governance challenges.

“Farmers should always have meaningful control over information concerning their land and livelihoods, and the costs of generating data should be shared fairly across the supply chain rather than imposed on those already operating under significant financial pressure,” advise the authors.

Relational traceability

Once the knowledge is there where the cotton came from and all the challenges along with it, Wells and Oudard propose a shift from transactional traceability to relational traceability. This means not only understanding where cotton moved, but also the people, places and conditions behind those movements.

“By combining thorough transaction data with long-term relationship building with farmers, cooperatives, ginners and local partners, companies can better understand what that information means in context and respond to changing conditions. Over time, we hope this can support supply chains that are more transparent and resilient, while creating stronger foundations for meaningful environmental and social outcomes,” conclude Wells and Oudard.

More information and the previous parts of the five-year research project can be found on the Cotton Diaries website: “Who Made My Cotton: Step 1: Brands and Retailers; Step 2: Mills, Spinners, Weaves; Step 3: Cotton Traders; Step 4: The Farmer’s Ecosystem".