Two hands holding a mound of crumbly dark soil

Regenerative Agriculture, Climate, and Healthy Soils

How small-scale farmers manage their cotton fields has a significant impact on biodiversity, soil health, and the global climate. Recognising this, the Cotton made in Africa^® (CmiA) standard has long integrated sustainable agricultural practices into its core requirements. Today, these practices fall under the umbrella of regenerative agriculture—a holistic approach designed not only to restore soil fertility but also to actively protect the climate and the environment.

The Crucial Role of Soil and the Threat of Climate Change

Soil is a central, yet often neglected, foundation for protecting the global climate, preserving biodiversity, and ensuring human survival. The way we treat our land determines whether unique plant and animal species can survive and whether future generations can continue to live off the land. This is especially true in rural Africa, where healthy soil is a fundamental building block for the future of numerous small-scale farming families, offering long-term assurance of reliable nutrition and stable harvests.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), around 23 percent* of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally are generated by the agriculture and forestry sectors. Regenerative agriculture helps to reduce this footprint by focussing on restoring healthy, resilient soils that can capture and store carbon.

However, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one third of the world’s soils are already degraded. In Africa, approximately 65 percent of arable land is affected by erosion-based losses of topsoil and vital nutrients. While chemical fertilisers can temporarily replace lost nutrients, they cannot restore organic matter; this eventually leaves the land even more vulnerable. Smallholders face increasingly unpredictable and severe weather patterns driven by climate change, including torrential rainfall, prolonged droughts, shorter growing seasons, and declining biodiversity. Because their livelihoods largely depend on crop yields, these families are among the most vulnerable to global warming, making soil fertility a matter of vital importance.

Get Involved

Hands-On Training and Sustainable Standards

To build long-term resilience, AbTF collaborates with agricultural experts and partnering cotton companies to design comprehensive training programmes focussed on regenerative agriculture. Measures for sustainable soil management are firmly anchored in the Cotton made in Africa standards and are regularly reviewed.
A key element of this strategy is a train-the-trainer model that empowers local extension officers—the agricultural advisors employed by partnering cotton companies. CmiA provides specialised qualification programmes and interactive materials to these officers, who then conduct hands-on training and field testing directly with the farmers, guiding them in restorative soil management.

Soil

CmiA’s Four Pillars of Regenerative Agriculture in Practice

To protect the climate and support farming communities, CmiA combines a variety of eco-friendly methods across four interconnected pillars: Healthy Soils, Strong Plants, Intact Environment, and Resilient Farming Families.

Healthy Soils

Maintaining soil health is crucial to mitigating climate change, as humus-rich soil has a natural capacity to capture carbon. CmiA farmers use techniques like low-till or zero-tillage (no-till) farming to avoid disturbing the soil, which also helps to reduce evaporation. This is complemented by crop rotation, intercropping (growing a variety of crops in one field), mulching, and humus formation to improve soil structure.

A woman spreading a heap of dark soil with her hands

Strong Plants

Through integrated production and pest management (IPPM), farmers learn to protect crops naturally. By combining organic seed treatments, molasses traps, organic fertilisers, and plant-based pest control (such as planting sunflowers to distract pests from cotton), they strengthen plants naturally while simultaneously reducing the need for chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilisers.

Intact Environment

Environmental protection extends beyond the fields. Farmers plant trees, bushes, and hedges to stem erosion, provide source materials for organic pesticides, and support wild animals, including birds. Afforestation and forest conservation also play key roles in preserving natural habitats.

Trees and huts in front of a mountain range under a wide sky

Resilient Farming Families

These environmental measures directly improve the livelihoods of farming families. Healthy soils lead to healthy plants, better harvests, and higher incomes. Through diverse crop rotations, farmers also grow food for their own tables. In addition, climate-focussed training enables them to manage their farms more effectively under changing environmental conditions.

A group of women singing and clapping together

Methods

Innovative Regenerative Methods

To offer the best possible support, CmiA continuously explores and promotes innovative regenerative cultivation techniques: composting and microbial support, biochar (pyrolysis), and carbon farming.

Composting and Microbial Support
Farmers receive training in advanced composting techniques, which includes utilising self-cultured compost microbes to naturally boost soil fertility and restore soil vitality.
Biochar (pyrolysis)
CmiA is implementing pyrolysis, a process that heats biomass in the absence of oxygen to produce biochar. When mixed with compost or manure, biochar’s porous structure enhances nutrient and microbial retention, acting as a habitat for beneficial microorganisms. This improves soil aggregation, water-retention capacity, and long-term carbon sequestration in the soil. The practical application of biochar is currently being evaluated for adaptation to local conditions in different CmiA countries.
Carbon Farming
CmiA is evaluating the feasibility of carbon farming—agricultural practices specifically designed to sequester carbon in soil and plant biomass. In addition to improving soil quality, this has the potential to generate additional income streams for small-scale farmers through the sale of certified carbon credits.

Impact

Sharing Knowledge to Scale Impact

A farmer in a blue shirt holding a cotton boll in the field

A core part of CmiA's strategy is fostering transnational and inter-organisational knowledge sharing among partnering cotton companies. By sharing successful practices and lessons learnt across borders, regenerative approaches are scaled up to the entire CmiA network in Africa. This continuous exchange of knowledge helps to sustainably improve farming practices, ultimately benefiting hundreds of thousands of people working in cotton production and restoring tens of thousands of hectares of land.

A key component of AbTF’s future strategy is the Regenerative Cotton Standard^® (RCS), which AbTF developed in 2023. Being implemented in Tanzania and India, this holistic standard offers both textile companies and cotton farmers a comprehensive, future-facing approach for meeting the growing climatic and environmental challenges in the global textile industry.

*The source for this figure is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, commonly known as the IPCC.
Specifically, this statistic comes from their landmark Special Report on Climate Change and Land. In this report, the IPCC established that agriculture, forestry, and other land-use activities are responsible for approximately 23 percent of the net total of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Learn more about Regenerative Cotton