The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) has today published its first Global Impact Report in five years, revealing measurable progress for cotton farmers after they adopted the BCI Standard and providing a candid assessment of the challenges that remain.
Released on World Cotton Day, the report draws on nine years of field-level data from BCI, the world’s largest cotton sustainability programme representing nearly a quarter of global cotton production. The findings offer valuable insight into how environmental and livelihood outcomes evolve over time, showing both the potential for progress and the complexity of achieving it consistently.
Key findings from BCI Farmers since joining the programme include:
- 69% reduced synthetic nitrogen use per kilogram of cotton;
- 65% reduced their synthetic pesticide use per hectare;
- 54% lowered their carbon footprint;
- 59% improved their net income from cotton;
- 52% reduced water applied per kilogram of cotton on fully irrigated farms
The 2026 Global Impact Report also shows significant progress in women’s participation, with women now accounting for 17% of field facilitation and producer unit management roles globally, up from 9% five years ago.
In his message introducing the report, Nick Weatherill, Better Cotton Initiative’s CEO, says: “Data and evidence represent the most important currency with which we operate and form the foundation for all aspects of our work – enabling us to strengthen our impact at field level and building the trust and confidence of the market and stakeholders in BCI cotton. It also is essential for us to deliver on our core mission and drive advancement of the cotton sector towards a more sustainable future.”
Alongside long-term trends, the report also provides insights into the recent 2024-25 season. In that period, farmers continued to record progress in reducing the use of nitrogen, pesticide active ingredient, irrigation water, and their overall carbon footprint compared with the previous season.
At the same time, the report highlights the realities of driving change across diverse farming contexts. Crop protection remains one area where progress is uneven, with important gains in many smallholder settings not yet consistently identified across large farm contexts.
Iain Gardiner, BCI’s Senior Director of Impact and Development, said: “BCI is committed to rigorous impact reporting, which gives confidence through diligently collected, interpreted, and disseminated findings drawn from reliable and complete data. Working closely with farming communities and partners, we have strived for optimised data collection and advanced contextual analysis of the more than 20 million data points we collect each year. This report is an unprecedented and transformative exercise by BCI, as it creates a first step for future programme delivery and deepened impact, with evidence that supports better informed data-driven decisions and scalable actions.”
