"Look down. What are you wearing?" The 2016 Annual Report opened with a question almost everyone can answer with cotton, then made its pitch: 12% of the world's cotton was already licensed as Better Cotton, and BCI wanted 30% by 2020.
Aim, mission and story
Founded in 2005 by a coalition of visionary organisations, BCI set out to make cotton better for the people who grow it, better for the environment it grows in and better for the sector's future. BCI Farmers commit to continuous improvement on four fronts: using water more efficiently, caring for soil health and natural habitat, cutting the most harmful chemicals and promoting decent work. The standard fits every scale, from smallholdings in Mali, Mozambique and Tajikistan to mechanised operations in China and the United States.
The question in that opening line is not rhetorical. Cotton dominates warm-weather wardrobes because it breathes and soaks up moisture, a point this summer menswear guide from Toronto tailor Fari Hara makes when it ranks cotton alongside linen for the hottest days. Every one of those shirts starts in a field, which is exactly where BCI aimed its standard.
Message from the CEO
Alan McClay used the 2016 report to recast BCI as a data organisation. Collecting millions of results indicators each season, he argued, let BCI target its interventions, prove continuous improvement and, eventually, talk credibly about impact.
The Growth and Innovation Fund
Launched in 2016, the BCI Growth and Innovation Fund (GIF) invested €4.2 million directly in its first year and leveraged another €4.7 million in partner co-funding, a portfolio worth €8.93 million. Across 42 projects and 34 implementing partners, it reached 600,900 farmers in China, India, Pakistan, Mozambique, Türkiye, Tajikistan and Senegal.
IDH served as fund manager. Retailer and brand members fed the fund through a fee tied to the Better Cotton they bought, and donors including Australia's DFAT, Germany's BMZ and IDH matched those contributions. Retailer and brand membership grew 43% to 66 during the year.
Stories from the field
Decent work in Türkiye
Implementing partner IPUD, working with the Fair Labor Association, trained 64 producer unit managers and field facilitators in Aydın and Şanlıurfa, who then cascaded the lessons to 998 farmers and workers. Managers began issuing contracts to migrant workers and improving seasonal workers' housing and transport.
A farmer in her own right
In Pakistan's Rahim Yar Khan district, Shama Bibi lost her husband, a cotton farmer, and resolved to farm herself despite family resistance. Through REEDS' learning group she mastered safer spraying, natural pest control, soil fertility and irrigation, and within a year ran her farm at a profit. BCI then worked with 40,560 women farmers worldwide.
Knowledge across borders
The report also followed an agricultural adviser through Tajikistan's cotton fields and previewed Australian growers preparing to share water-efficient practices with farmers in Pakistan.
Growing demand
BCI ran 260 ginner audits in ten countries, held 25 supplier training workshops reaching about 640 textile professionals, and put 340 professionals from 30 countries through online courses. Its 13 events drew more than 850 people, headlined by a General Assembly in Hong Kong with over 200 participants from 26 countries.
Financial footprint
Pulling together the membership body, the GIF and partners' direct project spending, BCI mobilised €17.04 million in 2016. Private sector funding supplied 48.9%, public and private match funding 22.5% and BCI's own earned income 28.5%. Of €14.71 million spent, 90.6% went to farmer support, assurance and demand, with just 9.4% on administration and finance.