Regenerative Cotton in a bright blue truck

Regenerative Cotton vs Organic Cotton

One of the biggest questions we're often asked — how does Regenerative Cotton differ from Organic Cotton?

Mari Stuart

It’s one of the most commonly asked questions we get at Materra: “How does regenerative cotton differ from organic cotton?”

The shortfalls of organic cotton

The organic cotton movement has done invaluable work supporting farmers to transition to better land management practices, and raising awareness among consumers about the impacts of conventional farming practices – especially chemical pesticides and fertilisers – on ecosystem and human health. At the same time, where organic cotton has not succeeded is in scaling at a global level to meet the market; in spite of being the best-known global certification programs for responsible farming, Organic and Fair Trade today account for only a sliver of agricultural production — about 1.4% of global production. Many excellent farmers face barriers to organic cotton certification, such as the often eye-watering costs of paperwork and logistics, and may choose to not get certified even though in practice they follow organic practices.

The main challenge with organic is that the focus has been excessively on the certification, on the “checking boxes” mentality. Insofar as organic certification primarily signals what is being avoided, i.e. synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, their removal does not automatically mean that a farm ecosystem or the soil becomes healthy. There are additional land management practices that need to be adopted. While many organic farmers, especially family and smallholder farmers, do adopt the full range of these practices (such as compost, the incorporation of organic matter, mulching and cover crops, intercropping and multicropping, integrated pest management etc.), the organic certification is not in anyway a guarantee that they are all adopted.

Here’s what many often don’t understand: There are many heavily tilled, large-scale organic monoculture farms in the world that lack biodiversity, have lifeless soils and are “organic in name only.”. The “organic” label is not an automatic guarantee that what you’ll find at these farms is soil squirming with life, or pollinators buzzing across a diverse range of plants, or a sense of health and vitality.

And regenerative cotton?

Regenerative cotton farming, on the other hand, is a system of principles and farming practices rooted in a relational rather than extractive way of viewing the land and farmers. Regenerative cotton enhances the vitality of the whole farm ecosystem, building its capacity to evolve, renew, and to regenerate the resources it needs to thrive and restore what has been degraded.

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There are many heavily tilled, large-scale organic monoculture farms in the world that lack biodiversity, have lifeless soils and are “organic in name only.”. The “organic” label is not an automatic guarantee that what you’ll find at these farms is soil squirming with life, or pollinators buzzing across a diverse range of plants, or a sense of health and vitality.

The differences between the organic farming and the regenerative farming approach:

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Organic is a centralised standard focused on practices; regenerative agriculture (for us at Materra) is rather an outcomes-based approach that can be adapted and adjusted based on context. Context is important because what makes sense on one farm in India may not make sense even on a farm in a different district, state or country.
While the organic standard requires the immediate stop of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, regenerative farming at Materra adopts a phased reduction approach instead.
But crucially, because regenerative is a holistic approach, it seeks to increase biodiversity and most importantly to foster the social and economic well-being of the farmer community, whereas these are not part of the organic requirement.

Regenerative agriculture is like a contextual, phased approach to organic with a few additional focus areas. It has high scaling potential as it recognises that farmers have different starting points.

Edward Hill, CSO, Materra

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It will not be equally easy for all farmers to immediately make the switch from conventional to regenerative practices. With that in mind, Materra seeks to meet farmers where they are at and set goals that are realistic and attainable for that particular farmer and their particular situation.

The relationship between organic certification and regenerative agriculture has been subject to some lively debate. On the one hand, some feel that regenerative should not take the path that organic has taken, separating itself into a rigid certification and potentially risking becoming siloed. But others express concern that removing the requirement of “organic” from the definition of regenerative may have “opened the door to the potential use of the term regenerative agriculture for green-washing agricultural practices that are irreversibly tied to agrochemical inputs.”

Are certifications important in farming sustainable cotton?

At Materra, our approach to organic is essentially the same as our approach to any accreditation or certification, whether organic or regenerative: We seek to go beyond certification. We believe that certification can play a role but not be the only thing to aspire to We are currently working with the RegenAgri and ROC certifications, and could theoretically add any certification to our toolbox that aligns well with our approach. But the certification is not the end point – it’s the starting point. Or in other words — baseline, not benchmark.

Regeneration is not about checking boxes, but about fostering holistic systemic health in ecosystems and communities. That is our goal.

To take just one example, we are committed to paying a farmer incentive even though it is NOT required by the certification programs we work with. That is because farmer support is at the core of the Materra ethos, independent of what any certification prescribes.

To sum up, organic cotton and regenerative cotton aim to change the resource-intensive, conventional methods of farming in the aim of a more sustainable cotton industry. However the approaches can be vastly different, making it important to not rely on a certificate.