FARFARM and organic cotton

Photo: Farfarm

In 2019, PRETATERRA entered into a partnership with FARFARM, a Brazilian company specialized in developing regenerative supply chains. Financed by one of the largest textile companies on the market, the project consisted of an agroforestry system focused on the production of organic cotton, supported by other secondary species of ecological and economic value.

FARFARM's mission seeks to transform the textile industry in Brazil. Through agroforestry, it establishes virtuous production chains to supply the textile market with ecologically produced raw materials, supporting small producers and, therefore, generating low socio-environmental impact.

From this mission, PRETATERRA began a diagnosis of the FARFARM property that received our project, located in the municipality of Montes Claros (MG). We started with a careful analysis of local soil and climate conditions to establish a project suited to the opportunities and realities of the region, keeping in mind the need to focus on a single commodity: organic cotton.

PRETATERRA developed the agroforestry design for the property, creating an integrated system with forestry lines, as well as a detailed guide for planting and managing the chosen species. We designed a biodiverse system, with 16 selected species, including fruit trees (coconut, papaya, pineapple), green manure plants (pigeon peas), wood species (such as angico and real aroeira) and, of course, cotton, the key species of the design. In this case, we planned a productivity of 150-160 kg of lint/ha, a numerical projection that even served as a criterion and basis for establishing the rest of the system.

The final design includes service and forage species that produce biomass and cover the soil, in addition to serving as food for livestock. One of the challenges was to identify species adapted to the region's semi-arid climate, a survey carried out in partnership with local farmers.

Following the essence of all PRETATERRA projects, it is a modular, fully replicable project. It can be adapted to farming families (FARFARM partners) who live on properties in the region and who can adopt, adapt and benefit directly from this design.

Beto Bina, co-founder of FARFARM, reports that the solutions found by the PRETATERRA project propose “guidelines to minimize risk, but with flexibility to use the available resources of each community and family”.

It is worth mentioning that the choice of cotton as the main crop has a very clear reason. Cotton is one of the basic raw materials of the fashion industry globally, a market that generates around US$2.5 billion annually. At the same time, it is a production chain with a high socio-environmental impact, with emphasis on the high consumption of water resources in production, pollution with chemical waste and, finally, greenhouse gas emissions (10% of those according to the World Bank).

Brazil has a role to play in this sector, as it is among the largest producers and exporters of this commodity (second only to the United States in this regard). In 2019, it recorded an increase of 35% in planted area and 32% in production compared to the previous year.  Therefore, the organic cotton agroforestry project conceived with FARFARM has enormous potential in contributing to the construction of a regenerative model for the textile and fashion industries.