The Role of Natural Fibers in Sustainable Solutions
Sustainability Includes Justice, Justice Requires Access to Technology
Terry Townsend, Cotton Analytics & Veronica Bates Kassatly, Independent Analyst
Presented by Terry Townsend on the Jubilee of the 85 th Anniversary of the Court of Arbitration At the Gdynia Cotton Association, 7-8 September 2023
Sustainability Means No Poverty & No Hunger
The world needs, governments are demanding, and consumers say they want, “sustainability”. However, sustainability means different things to different people, and without a standard definition and objective metrics, the concept of “sustainability” can be easily manipulated to mean whatever brands and retailers want it to mean to enhance sales.
That is what is currently happening.
This paper will outline the harm that manipulation of sustainability concepts is doing and why natural fibres must be considered sustainable. Further, this paper will briefly outline the role that the Gdynia Cotton Association could play in ending the current ‘sustainability charade’ in the fashion sector.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are based on decades of work by member governments of the United Nations, and the 17 SDGs agreed in 2015 define sustainability.
SDGs 1 & 2 are No Poverty and No Hunger. The World Bank estimates that approximately one-fourth of the world’s population lives below the Societal Poverty Line (SPL). In 2020, The number of people in extreme poverty rose by 70 million to more than 700 million. The global extreme poverty rate reached 9.3 percent, up from 8.4 percent in 2019.
These people do not have regular access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food. As of 2019, an estimated 690 million people were undernourished, 144 million children under the age of 5 were stunted, and 47 million were affected by wasting.
For the 21st Century, these are horrendous statistics - yet No Poverty & No Hunger, are not the priority of any major sustainability effort in the fashion value chain. From Textile Exchange’s Preferred Fibres, Worldly’s Higg Material Sustainability Index (MSI) to Kering’s Environmental Profit & Loss, sustainability equates almost entirely to environmental impacts. Further, even in consideration of environmental impacts, the major sustainability schemes place little or no weight on the impacts of non-biodegradability, synthetic fibre pollution and fossil fuel extraction on the environment and human health. Astonishingly, even UN publications focus on environmental impacts of production within the fashion value chain. No Poverty & No Hunger appear to be afterthoughts, despite recurring reports of poverty and hunger from apparel workers to alpaca farmers.
Most of the world’s farmers, including producers of cotton and other natural fibres, are not large landholders. Most are small-holders, and even small reductions in revenue can leave these households unable to pay for school for their children, health care, or food. Sustainability is science used to measure and understand environmental impacts and resource consumption.
But sustainability is also justice. To be sustainable, production systems within the fashion value chain must address poverty and hunger, and cotton, along with sister natural fibres, are natural vehicles for delivering a pro-poor agenda. Sustainability schemes must recognize the pro-poor role played by natural fibres. The Gdynia Cotton Association can help in this endeavor.
Natural Fibres are Engines of Justice
The role of natural fibres in achieving SDGs 1 & 2 is demonstrated by data on value and employment.
The value of natural fibre production at the producer level reached approximately US$77 billion in 2022. Cotton production at the producer level had an estimated value of $63 billion, wool about $8 billion, jute about $3 billion, and all other natural fibres combined had a value of about $4 billion.
It is difficult to estimate employment in the agricultural segments of natural fiber value chains because most production occurs in countries with weak systems of data collection, most producers are small holders, and most labor is hired informally and seasonally, and because some households go in and out of production from one season to the next, making it difficult to know who and how many are employed in any one year. Nevertheless, a reasonable estimate of total employment in natural fiber industries, including family labor, hired labor, and employment in industries providing services to agriculture, and including both full-time year-round employment and part-time or seasonal employment, is around 55 million households, with total employment between 150 million and 200 million each year.
In other words, between 2% and 3% of the world’s population earns at least part of their annual income, and in many cases their entire annual cash income, from natural fibre production. That is not a trivial role. That is a significant contribution to SDGs 1 & 2. That is a significant contribution to justice.
The average household producing natural fibre receives gross revenue (net revenue or income will be less) of about $1,400. The average cotton or wool household produces about $2,000 worth of fibre. Flax, grown mostly in Europe, has the highest gross revenue per producing household, while sisal, kapok, and specialty animal fibres such as rabbit and mohair, also have relatively high gross receipts per household. Households producing jute have the lowest gross revenue at about $200, but their cash costs of production are essentially zero.
Natural Fibres are Durable, Storable and Transportable
Cotton and other natural fibres are vehicles for a pro-poor sustainability agenda, not just because of their value and employment opportunities, but also because of their unique attributes as durable, storable, transportable products.
Natural fibres can be stored for years without loss of value. Bales of fibre do not require refrigeration, and when stored properly, they do not degrade in quality, and they are not vulnerable to mold, bacteria, insects, or other vermin. A bale of cotton packed to international standards is sufficiently dense that oxygen is squeezed from the interior, preventing the establishment of fire or the survival of diseases or insects. A cotton bale will not absorb water, and if the bale ties are not broken will float indefinitely.
Natural fibres can be transported over rough roads for thousands of kilometers without damage. If a bale falls out of the back of a truck or off the side of a rail car, you just brush off the dust, put it back, and continue.
Further, fibres have high ratios of value to weight and density, so they can be economically shipped from interior locations. During 2022/23, the total marketing margin for cotton from the USA to East Asia was about 20%. Whilst the 2022 marketing margin for US wheat to Indonesia was about 35% of the landed price.
These are the reasons why cotton is grown in landlocked regions like Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad, Zambia and Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan and Xinjiang, Northern Texas, Central Brazil, and Central Maharashtra, thousands of kilometers from ports and weeks from shipping destinations.
Natural fibres are grown on the frontiers of global trade, and in many regions, fibres are the only viable economic activity available, providing incomes to millions. Natural fibres connect people to markets.
They also contribute to food security. Grain crops are in the grass family and have horizontal roots, good for stabilizing soil but leaving crops vulnerable to water and heat stress. Cotton is a woody perennial with vertical roots that typically descend 1.5 meters, allowing it to provide an economic yield in semi-arid and arid regions where food crops would fail. Cotton, and most other farmed fibres, are grown in rotation with food crops, and the vertical roots of plant crops break up the hardpan and draw nutrients from below the surface into the topsoil.
With animal fibres, animal husbandry is an important component of balanced whole-farm agricultural systems for many small holders.
As cash crops, cotton and other natural fibres often serve as collateral against input loans to farmers in developing countries, allowing farmers access to fertilizer, insecticides, and seeds for food crops that would otherwise be unavailable. Consequently, natural fibre production enable increased food production.
Cotton and her sister natural fibres also provide cash incomes that enable farmers to purchase food, as well as paying for school fees, clothes, and health care. For many smallholder households in Africa and elsewhere, basic sustenance is provided by food crop production and animal husbandry, but cotton, jute, alpaca, abaca, or sisal are often the only source of cash income for the family.
These are the reasons why it is appropriate to talk about natural fibres in the context of sustainability and the achievement of SDGs 1 & 2. But despite the clear and documented role of natural fibres as vehicles of a No Poverty/No Hunger agenda, the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Law, the German Green Button program, the French Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), and the original proposals for the EU PEF and Ecodesign for Sustainable Products (ESPR), the Worldly Materials Sustainability Index (MSI), and the proposed New York Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act are based mostly on environmental impacts, and even those are often poorly measured.
Sustainability Metrics must be Science-Based
Everyone agrees that fibres must be produced sustainably, and when pressed, many will agree that the meaning of sustainability must encompass justice. However, many people fail to understand that justice requires that farmers be allowed to utilize technologies, just like every other segment of the world population.
A little history can demonstrate just how important technology is to agriculture. In 2000 BC when the pyramids were already ancient, the world population is estimated at 27 million. By the time of Julius Caesar in Rome and the Han Dynasty in China, the world population had grown to around 300 million. By 1500, as the Black Death still haunted Europe, the Ming Dynasty ruled China, and the Age of Sail was underway, the world population had grown to just 500 million.
With the start of the Renaissance, the world population began growing faster, and by 1900 had reached 1.65 billion. Then in just a century, the world population reached 6 billion, today it is 8 billion, and an eventual total of 11 billion is forecast by 2100.
The world population could not grow faster in centuries past because famine was a routine component of human existence. Famine caused by crop failure occurred repeatedly and routinely. Famine occurred so often that only the greatest famines are recorded, and the list of such famines on Wikipedia goes for 13 pages.
Famine does not mean that a few poor people went hungry. Famine meant that huge swaths of populations perished from the effects of crop failure.
Today, hunger exists because of poverty and governance failures, not because of crop failures. Modern medicine, sanitation, and stress-reducing technologies like air-conditioning and elevators contribute to longer life expectancy, but they wouldn’t help much if people still routinely starved to death. Today, there is ample food for every person on earth, and the conquering of famine is one of humanity’s greatest achievements.
The tools of modern agriculture that make our world of relative abundance possible are selective breeding, mechanization, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and the products of the life sciences, including GMOs. Without these advances in agricultural technologies, the world population could not be more than 3 or 4 billion, no matter what advances were made in other spheres.
The denial of technology by NGOs and government agencies is contributing to the strangulation of the natural fibre industries, to the loss of competitiveness to polyester, and to stagnating earnings for the poorest on the planet. Without urgent action, the situation can only become worse, especially if governments will not oblige synthetic fibres to internalize their negative externalities.
Natural fibre yields must rise, and the cost of production must fall; this is a fundamental reality of a competitive world economy in which consumers exercise choice based on fashion, fit, color, feel, price, availability, and other factors. If natural fibres cannot supply market demands at prices consumers will pay, they will wither, with dire economic impacts on millions of the world’s poor.
Some observers around the world still reject the science underlying global warming, or they argue it is exaggerated, or statistics are unreliable, or the whole concept is a hoax perpetrated by governments to control people. Likewise, many NGOs, thought leaders, and regulators reject the science underlying modern agricultural production technologies, especially biotechnology. Technology deniers assert that statistics showing yield gains or reductions in pesticide use are incomplete, or transitory, or they assert that farmers are incapable of using technologies safely and effectively, or they claim we can’t know the long-term effects of technologies, but of course the long-term is forever in the future.
Therefore, rather than working to assure broad access to agricultural production technologies, many fibre sustainability programs actively discourage or even prohibit such technologies. BCI claims to be technology neutral but makes no effort to enable farmers to access advanced technologies. CmiA and organic specifically reject biotechnology, and both advocate that farmers try to control pests by planting marigolds and spraying crops with concoctions of cow urine, chilis and peppers. CmiA also prohibits irrigation! If we truly want to reduce global warming and improve global justice, this cannot continue.
The Role of the GCA
Through thirty years of negotiation and debate within the UN system, the world has agreed that No Hunger & No Poverty are foundational components of the definition of sustainability. Accordingly, the metrics to define ‘sustainable’ fibres, must include impacts on Poverty and Hunger. The role of natural fibres in the world economy, providing employment and income to tens of millions, makes them sustainable - by definition.
However, recognizing natural fibres as sustainable does not automatically mean that they can meet consumer expectations and contribute positively to climate change. Buggy whips were probably sustainable, but that does not mean we still need them. If natural fibres are to thrive as industries in the decades ahead, whilst simultaneously reducing emissions and resource use, producers must have access to the tools of productivity that will enhance yields, improve quality, and expand functionality.
The Gdynia Cotton Association (GCA) has a role to play as an advocate of cotton and all natural fibres. The GCA can raise awareness with both officials in Poland, and Polish MEPs, of the role of natural fibres as engines of economic opportunity, and of the need for EU regulations to prioritize No Poverty and No Hunger as foundational elements of sustainability.
The GCA can work through channels to ensure that the EU representatives in Brussels to the International Cotton Advisory Committee, and the FAO Intergovernmental Group on Hard Fibres, and the Intergovernmental Group on Jute and Allied Fibres, prioritize the achievement of social justice and technology availability, within the work of each organization.
Likewise, the GCA as a member of the Committee for International Cooperation Among Cotton Associations (CICCA) can raise the subjects of social justice and technology availability in discussions within the cotton industry. Because of the strong links between the GCA and university researchers in Poland working on natural fibre issues, the GCA is well positioned to serve as an advocate within Poland and the EU for sustainability metrics that recognize the contributions of all natural fibres to the achievement of social justice.
Natural Fibres are great industries, touching almost every person on earth every day, and providing opportunities to tens of millions. The GCA can bring this to the forefront of global policy and climate strategy. The Gdynia Cotton Association has a proud history of arbitrating disagreements, and as EU citizens, the GCA can act as a catalyst for a reevaluation of the role of cotton and other natural fibers in proposed EU regulations on apparel and textiles, and on the importance of technology transfer in agriculture.