The Cotton USA Sustainability Task Force has established goals for improvements in key areas of environmental stewardship, farm productivity and resource efficiency including land, water, air, input and energy use by 2025. The task force was established by the US cotton industry in 2017. It includes representatives from all US cotton industry’s seven raw cotton segments: cotton producers, ginners, merchants, co-ops, warehousers, cottonseed processors and US textile mills. The US is the world’s largest cotton exporting country and the third largest producer.

The goals set by the task force to be achieved by 2025 are: reducing the amount of land needed to produce a pound of cotton fiber by 13 per cent; reducing soil loss by 50 per cent, in balance with new soil formation; reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 39 per cent; reducing energy to produce seed cotton and ginned lint by 15 per cent; increasing water use efficiency (more fiber per gallon) by 18 per cent; and increasing soil carbon in fields by 30 per cent.

The United States cotton industry is the first to establish national, quantifiable goals for sustainability. Additionally, its farmers operate under voluminous, stringent and enforceable regulations. The industry has made great gains in sustainability over the past 35 years.