American cotton growers can now join the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol, a new standard for verifying the sustainability progress of U.S. cotton. As consumers continue to demand eco-friendly products, enrolling in the Trust Protocol will help growers showcase data-driven, measurable, and verified sustainability practices and achieve continuous improvement.
Each participating grower commits to documenting and tracking their progress toward improving soil carbon health while seeking year over year reductions in soil erosion, overall land use, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. By 2025, the Trust Protocol aims to have more than 50% of all U.S. cotton registered as Trust Protocol Cotton.
“Consumers want more transparency when it comes to the products they purchase, and the European Union is threatening brands and retailers with stricter regulations when it comes to sustainability reporting and the responsible sourcing of raw materials. These evolving dynamics prompted the creation of a new sustainability standard for cotton and the launching of the U.S. Trust Protocol by the industry,” said Gary Adams, President of the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol. “By joining the Trust Protocol, our growers will now be able to better document their current sustainability programs using a quantifiable, digital platform and that data is assessed and verified by a third-party audit – something no other cotton producing nation does today.”
The Trust Protocol documents and verifies each grower’s sustainability progress through a data collection platform developed by Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, which is a non-profit alliance of diverse grower organizations and other agricultural, fuel and food supply chain participants and stakeholders.