USA
November 20, 2014
Source – Bayer CropScience
Spinning mills around the world demand high quality, sustainably produced cotton. Consumers of cotton apparel and home furnishings continue to demand higher quality goods, and they want to know more about how the cotton that goes into their T-shirts and jeans is produced.
Because sustainability and supply chain transparency are becoming more important to consumers, many spinning mills have focused on sourcing cotton that meets consumer demand.
U.S. cotton growers can help meet this demand by producing higher quality cotton and marketing their fiber as e3 cotton.
Bayer CropScience developed the e3 cotton program to help increase worldwide demand for U.S. cotton and promote sustainable cotton production. The company offers the program to help FiberMax and Stoneville growers market their cotton as sustainably produced, high quality fiber. e3 certification indicates the grower’s commitment to produce cotton in an environmentally responsible, economically viable and socially equitable manner.
Many U.S. growers have already integrated these sustainability commitments into their farming operations. Steve Newsom, a cotton grower from Sundown, TX, has participated in the FiberMax marketing program for several years. For him, sustainable cotton production is something that cotton growers have been doing for a long time, even if they didn’t call it sustainable cotton production.
“Give me a piece of land. Five years from now, is it better?” Newsom said. “That’s my analysis of sustainability. I feel like improving the land is excellent proof of our sustainability.”
The e3 cotton program helps growers determine where they can improve their farming practices and allows them to market their fiber as certified, sustainably produced e3 cotton.
The certification process requires four simple steps.
Step One. Plant FiberMax or Stoneville cotton. Only growers who plant FiberMax and Stoneville cotton can participate in the e3 program.
Step Two. Complete the e3 enrollment and self-assessment forms found online.
Step Three. Use the Fieldprint Calculator, an online tool, to assess the sustainability of your cotton operation. The Fieldprint Calculator estimates sustainability in multiple categories such as a land use, irrigation water use and greenhouse gas emissions, and establishes a baseline sustainability assessment. Growers agree to continual improvement against their baseline assessment.
Step Four. At harvest, certify your bales as Certified FiberMax or Authentic Stoneville and identify them as e3 cotton. This designation tells buyers that the bales were grown in the U.S. from FiberMax or Stoneville cottonseed with a commitment to increasing sustainability.
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