Olam Agri's regenerative agriculture programme is set to expand its footprint to Australia and Brazil later this year to meet the growing demand for traceable and sustainably grown cotton.

The comprehensive programme aims to empower cotton farmers by providing them with tools, resources, and market access to mitigate climate risks, enhance soil fertility, sequester carbon, promote biodiversity, and manage water and energy use.

Olam Agri CEO of fibre, agri-industrials and Ag services Ashok Hegde explained: At Olam Agri, we want to transform food and agriculture supply chains to have a net positive impact on climate, nature and biodiversity while ensuring transparency and traceability.

"We’ll be able to provide our customers access to sustainably sourced cotton that is fully traceable from production to shipment.”

Olam Agri started its regenerative agriculture journey in cotton in 2020 and the current programme represents the culmination of extensive efforts to offer customers cotton products with a full chain of custody certification.

This certification covers every stage of the production process, including cultivation, harvesting, ginning, storage, and shipment. All farms and ginning facilities participating in the programme will be “regenagri” certified.

Olam Agri's head of climate, environment, and natural capital Dr Shailendra Mishra highlighted the role of the programme is to strengthen sustainability standards in the cotton supply chain. He added: “Embracing regenerative cotton builds more resilient supply chains, creating a unique opportunity for global brands and retailers to offer sustainably grown cotton to consumers worldwide.”

Olam Agri said it has already attained regenagri certification for 100% of its directly sourced cotton in Côte d’Ivoire. This includes more than 250,000 hectares of land, 20,000 farm enterprises, and both ginning facilities, processing 100,000 metric tonnes (MT) of seed cotton in the country.

In the US, Olam Agri claims to have secured regenagri certification for 15,000 hectares of farmland and three ginning facilities producing 20,000 MT of cotton.

Regenagri CEO Franco Costantini said: “Regenagri aims to secure the health of the land and those who live on it, and has tripled in growth over the last year, with more than one million hectares of land worldwide under the programme.

“It will provide Olam Agri with a third-party programme to assess, certify and report the environmental impact across different commodities, from cotton to food products.”

As one of the world’s largest cotton merchants, Olam Agri, with decades of experience in building an integrated global cotton business, claims to directly support the livelihoods of 350 million people worldwide, including 100 million farmers.