Beneath the overarching theme ‘It Begins with Farmers’, the 2025 Higher Cotton Convention will catalyse vigorous debate and collaborative motion because it explores the sector’s most urgent points and pursuits, from local weather finance and regenerative agriculture to traceability, sustainability claims, and business rules.
19 Could, Geneva – Higher Cotton, the world’s largest cotton sustainability initiative, will welcome cotton farmers, retailers, manufacturers, environmental activists, and innovators to its annual convention, which takes place in İzmir, Türkiye, on 18-19 June.
Beneath the overarching theme ‘It Begins with Farmers’, the 2025 Higher Cotton Convention will catalyse vigorous debate and collaborative motion because it explores the sector’s most urgent points and pursuits, from local weather finance and regenerative agriculture to traceability, sustainability claims, and business rules.
Alan McClay, CEO at Higher Cotton, stated: “The Higher Cotton Convention places international cotton farming communities on the centre of its discussions. They type the spine of the style and textile sectors, and it is via this lens that we will attain a consensus as an business that drives progress for everybody, proper again to the beginning of our provide chains.”
The convention will discover 4 vital and interconnected themes: Nurturing Equality – A Fairer Future for Farming Communities; Restoring the Setting – Turning Local weather Commitments into Motion; Deepening Influence with Information – Unlocking Insights for a Stronger Cotton Trade; and Shaping our Future – Coverage, Collaboration and Trade Evolution.
Confirmed keynote audio system embody ex-Starbucks Chief Sustainability Officer, Michael Kobori, who now serves as an unbiased Director of Bunge International, SA., one of many world’s largest agricultural corporations; social and environmental advocate Lavinia Muth, whose work in ethically pushed trend and agriculture has spanned 15 years; and local weather justice campaigner Tori Tsui, who’s a Senior Advisor for the Fossil Gasoline Non-Proliferation Treaty and Local weather Justice Lead for Brian Eno’s Earth P.c.
With just one month till the occasion, Muth stated: “I am excited to hitch the Higher Cotton Convention to problem and reimagine cotton farming as if relations matter. This is not nearly higher practices, it is about deeper relationships: cotton as kin, land as ancestor and labour as sacred and treasured. Let’s transfer past sustainability as a guidelines and towards justice as a observe.”
Kobori, who was concerned within the institution of Higher Cotton 15 years in the past, added: “I’ve adopted and supported the organisation’s extraordinary progress with nice curiosity. I’m trying ahead to studying about Higher Cotton’s newest impacts in addition to its future plans and the way I can greatest assist these.”
The occasion will welcome farmers and field-level representatives from Australia, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Pakistan, Türkiye, the USA, and Uzbekistan.
Organisations additionally set to take part over the 2 days embody: IKEA, Textile Change, John Lewis, the Honest Labor Affiliation, the Natural Cotton Accelerator, FS Influence Finance, Solidaridad, Cotton Australia, and Farmer Join.
After the convention, Higher Cotton will host attendees for farm excursions at which they’ll see first-hand how Turkish cotton farmers have been implementing extra sustainable agricultural practices.
