Environmental sustainability and cotton crop performance indicators in the USA

According to the 2023 Cotton Incorporated Life Cycle Assessment, cited by Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer Jesse Daystar, over the past four surveys, U.S. cotton producers have reduced soil losses by 45 percent and improved irrigation water use efficiency by 58 percent. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by 25 percent, and land use efficiency has increased by 30 percent.

These results are achieved through the adoption of best practices and tools. An increasing number of farmers are using cover crops, reduced tillage, no-till or strip-till methods, precision farming, irrigation scheduling, flow meters, and soil moisture monitoring. In particular, the share of farms using cover crops increased from 20 percent in 2015 to 48 percent in 2023, while the acreage under no-till and strip-till technologies grew between 2008 and 2023 alongside a reduction in conventional tillage.

A life cycle assessment (LCA) of fiber production commissioned by Cotton Incorporated showed that the composition of natural fiber creates biogenic carbon sequestration. Taking into account the temporal fluxes of this gas, cotton production achieves net negative emissions from the field to the mill of -0.264 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of fiber.

As Liz Hershfield, Executive Director of Cotton USA™ and Co-Director of the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol, noted, cotton producers were among the first to adopt precision farming tools, including satellite imagery, drones, and AI-driven agronomic management. According to her, more than 15,000 cotton farms are located across 17 states, 98 percent of which are family-owned operations.