The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) will publish its first public impact report in five years on World Cotton Day, and its data shows nearly 70 percent of BCI-licensed farmers improved soil health by up to 30 percent on average.

Aliya Malik, chief commercial officer at BCI, shared the figures at the Fall Sourcing Journal Summit in conversation with Jasmin Malik Chua, Sourcing Journal's climate and labor editor. The report marks a strategic pivot for the cotton standards body: from sustainability training toward a formal regenerative farming standard, backed by an expanded Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system.

Why did the reporting gap last five years?

Malik said BCI sat on the data because it could not standardize farm-level results across vastly different growing regions.

"We have a lot of data, and that has led us, in the last five years, to be almost green-hushing," Malik said. "There was so much data—it wasn't that comparable. How do you put it out? What if it doesn't all look great? We ended up deciding that we wanted to put it all out there to create more transparency in the industry about how cotton looks different all around the world."

The report presents confirmed environmental gains alongside unresolved regional problems. The picture on crop protection and pesticide use is mixed. Smallholder farms receiving direct BCI support and training achieved significant reductions in pesticide use, but larger farms in the U.S., Brazil and Australia showed less change, offsetting global averages.

What changes under a regenerative standard?

Malik framed the shift to regenerative as both a return and an upgrade. The practices are not new to farmers; the market's expectations are.

"Regenerative practices at the farm level are not new to farmers," Malik said. "It was the way you farmed before. With the 'green revolution,' we were trying to produce as much as possible but not viewing the soil as a commodity that can be drawn down on. When that happens, the food stops having nutrition in it, and the land pays the cost."

Climate now drives on-the-ground decisions more than any other factor, she added: "For the farmers, and we really focus on the farm, there's no denying climate change. The climate is the farmer's boss. And you are a taker of what is happening in the climate, whether there's water, there's not water, whether it's too hot, or whether it's too wet."

How will claims be verified?

To make regenerative claims auditable rather than aspirational, BCI is investing in MRV at the system level, combining field data with satellite monitoring and real-time AI validation.

"MRV, or monitoring, reporting, and verification, it's technical, but it's also pretty simple," Malik said. "It's about having reporting systems where there are also checks so that the data is meaningful and reliable… It means working with stuff that's out there, like satellites that can see farms, using that as checks, and working with AI to make sure that data's being validated on a real-time basis."

What does this force sourcing teams to decide?

Malik's message to retail brands was blunt: technology alone will not deliver regenerative cotton, and long-term financial commitments must replace checkbox compliance. She pointed to price-premium and fair-trade models already established in cocoa and coffee as the template textiles lacks.

"Cotton is the foundation for the lives and livelihoods of 250 million people around the world—cotton is people," Malik stated. "In food-based crops, that's understood. Price premiums and fair trade models for cocoa and coffee are well understood, accepted, and invested in. And in textiles, we don't do that, because we're always tempted to look for a quick win and a quick shortcut for sustainability."

For sourcing and compliance teams, the report's publication creates a decision point: once regional performance data is public, brands sourcing from the U.S., Brazil and Australia on pesticide metrics — or from smallholder regions on soil health gains — will face differentiated claims behind a single BCI licence. Buyers will need to decide whether to back the regenerative transition with multi-year premiums or treat it as another documentation requirement.