Sustainable can be fashionable for brands

'Yes I am very afraid, a admits Moussa Doumbia. 'Sometimes I can not sleep. ' Moussa grows cotton like a cash crop within Mali. He lies awake through the night wondering whether he can afford medicine to deal with malaria associated with himself and their two youngest kids, just three and five years of age. The three tons associated with cotton Moussa creates gives him a good annual income of $322 under $1 a day time.

'The cotton price isn't enough for farmers to pay for our needs such as school fees as well as health, ' he or she says.

So Moussa additionally farms corn, nuts, beans and grain to feed their 10-member family. He or she breeds cattle, lambs, and oxen that he sells within dire emergencies. He's to rely upon occasional handouts through his two siblings who work overseas one in Cote dIvoire and also the other in The country. And still, it isn't enough. "I don't like my children to become cotton farmers, inch he explains. "Because they'll have no long term. "

Sustainability begins with farmers

Cotton farmers would be the invisible foundation of the fashion industry. Transparency and traceability are actually key buzz words in the market, yet companies hardly ever delve deep enough to their supply chains to possess any direct involvement using the suppliers of this particular raw material.

But ignoring 100 % cotton farmers ignores the near future of fashion. The downward pressure from the clothing supply chain and also the obsession with inexpensive fast fashion comes at a cost not and then farmers but towards the industry itself.

High of global cotton provide is grown through 35-50 million small-scale 100 % cotton farmers in building countries, many within least developed nations. Like Moussa, the majority of living below the actual poverty line, susceptible to low and fluctuating prices less than their costs associated with production, dependent upon dinners and centermen.

Cotton production within developing countries includes a smaller environmental impact and costs much less. Most cotton farming in West The African continent is rain-fed, giving it having a much lower drinking water footprint than industrialized harvesting. Meanwhile, it costs just US$ 30 cents to make a pound of 100 % cotton in Benin as opposed to US$ 68 cents in the USA. Yet it may be the cotton farmers within regions like Western Africa and Indian who suffer probably the most from low worldwide cotton prices as well as underinvestment.