From boll to blouse, can we trace where our cotton comes from?

Cotton is in the nappies we wrap our babies in, the jeans we wear, and the sheets we sleep in.

If consumers care to find out where it comes from and how it is grown, technology will soon allow us to scan a QR code and trace it all the way from farm to cotton gin to store.

Shannon Mercer is the chief executive of FibreTrace, a company aiming to become a global supply chain answer to transparency and traceability.

“FibreTrace is a luminescent pigment that actually is embedded into the cotton fibre so we can trace that cotton all the way from the farm right through to finished goods,” Mr Mercer said.

“We grab that luminescent pigment and we convert that into a fibre that mimics cotton.

“At the ginning level (separating the cotton fibre from the seeds), we blend it in, at very small levels … it’s like less than dust that goes throughout the bale.

“Once it’s embedded throughout the cotton, it stays there all the way through finishing, dyeing … and we can pick up in real time whether or not there’s been any blending and ensure that the origin of that fibre is what it says it is.”

500 million people wear Australian cotton

In an average year, Australian farmers grow enough cotton to clothe half a billion people.

According to Cotton Australia, a single 227-kilogram bale of Australian cotton can produce 2,100 pairs of boxer shorts.

Or 3,000 nappies, 215 pairs of jeans, 1,200 T-shirts, or 4,300 pairs of socks.

Given the average 500-hectare cotton farm can produce 11 bales per hectare, that is the equivalent of 1.18 million pairs of jeans.

But the industry is under pressure, as consumers demand increased transparency and traceability.

Cotton’s social licence

Brook Summers runs the ‘cotton to market’ program at Cotton Australia. She says brands and retailers, along with consumers, are calling for increased transparency.

“They want to know where their raw materials have come from and then more than that. They want to know under what sort of circumstances those raw materials were grown,” she said.

Key concerns among consumers include water efficiency and chemical use.

According to Cotton Australia, today producing a bale of cotton takes 48 per cent less water and 97 per cent less insecticide but this information needs to be communicated better to the consumer.

This is where traceability comes in and, for a product like cotton, it involves linking information along the entire supply chain from the farm to the customer.

In theory, it can be done; as cotton grows, it takes on the elements of its environment giving it a unique fingerprint that can be tested.

“We can trace a bale of cotton from the paddock that it was grown in right through to the spinning mill, but after that we really lose track of what happens to our Australian cotton,” Ms Summers said.

“Our next challenge as an industry is to try and connect that bale from the farm further into the supply chain so that we can provide our customers with that really transparent, traceable raw material that has all the wonderful attributes of Australian cotton attached to it.”

A more sustainable future

Traceability is not the cotton industry’s only challenge as consumers demand the crop be grown more sustainably, particularly when it comes to water usage.

According to Cotton Australia, an average cotton farm irrigates and can grow 454 kilograms of cotton, which is two bales per megalitre of water — almost double the industry average of a decade ago.

Australian cotton growers produce more crop per drop than any other cotton-producing country.

Because of government-regulated water licensing schemes, cotton is only planted when sufficient water is made available from rivers and groundwater sources.

The Cotton Research Development Corporation (CRDC) has invested in sustainable water use, emission reductions, and soil health.

This investment saw a 6 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per bale in 2021.

But given the wetter-than-average season, herbicide use increased because of the need for weed control.

“We want to make sure that cotton growers are not just managing the landscape that they work in [and] are actually contributing to a bigger picture and helping the environment that we live in,” Meredith Conaty, the research and development manager at CDRD, said.

Ms Summers hoped the investment in transparency would pay off for cotton growers.

“I think as an industry and for Cotton Australia, we’re really trying to find something that can create value for our farmers who’ve done all the hard work in sustainability for so many years on their farms,” she said.

“I think we can expect much more connected supply chains, much more transparent supply chains, and really good visibility about where that cotton has come from, who has grown it, and how they’ve grown it.”