Regenerative Farming & Fashion: What Is It and Why Is The Fashion Industry Talking about it?
Words such as ‘circularity’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘compostable’, have been trending words in fashion, and now the next one is ‘Regenerative’. The fashion industry has a large footprint on carbon emissions, water wastage, and displacements of biodiversity through the current conventional farming methods and regenerative agriculture aims to reduce those footprints. What is “Regenerative” exactly and why does it matter in the fashion industry?
What Is Regenerative Farming?
Regenerative farming, in a nutshell, is an indigenous approach to farming that uses holistic practices that replenish the earth while yielding a return on plant and fibre growth.
Historically, humans have created clothing from local sources such as locally grown farms and animals as a byproduct of food cultivation that was a much more simple, natural way of sourcing clothing fibres. I would imagine my grandparents back home in rural China and even your grandparents or great grandparents farmed this way before the Industrial Revolution.
Modern fashion systems using Industrial Farming methods overturn soil or use toxic agrochemicals that harm the health of farmers, reduce biodiversity, and degrade soil health.
Holistic Practices
Though the Textiles Exchange, Fibreshd, ROA, have created their standards for how they will define what regenerative agriculture means to them, as it stands right now there is no industry definition of what exactly regenerative agriculture means nor are there a set of defined practices.
Unlike the term compostable which typically refers to an item breaking down in 90 days, “Regenerative” does not have these measurable points to determine if a farming system is exactly regenerative or not. This is something to be critical of as a reader and consumer especially when shopping.
Below are only a few examples of holistic practices in Regenerative Farming :
Low or no tilling of land
Intercropping
Cover Crops
Crop Rotation.
Low or No Tilling
Tilling is digging, stirring, and overturning soil which releases the carbon stored in the land into the environment. By reducing the need to till can help the soil retain more water, organic matter and store more carbon.
Cover Crops
This means to plant crops that are not for selling, but rather for providing nutrients and protection to the soil. If the soil is healthy and protected, it more carbon can be drawn down from the atmosphere.
Intercropping
Improving soil quality by planting different types of crops close to each other.
Crop Rotation
The practice of rotating the variety of crops planted from one year to the next. This enables the soil to rebuild itself for different plants over the years and optimizes nutrients in the soil.
More than Just Farming Methods
There are more practices such as composting systems for fertilizer, planting perennials etc. however regenerative farming also includes a very human side to it that takes into account who the farmers are, their health, and the land being used was obtained ethically.
Attention is now being drawn to the true impacts the fashion industry has on land, and how modern production is rooted in colonization, capitalism and racism. The regenerative way of fibre sourcing is rooted in justice, equity, and land sovereignty. According to the Regenerative Agriculture Landscape Analysis by the Textile Exchange, “Indigenous advocates call for an acknowledgement of the Indigenous roots of regenerative agriculture and of past and current racial injustice to underpin future work.”
Regenerative Fashion & Regenerative Cotton
Regeneration Fashion is clothing made from fibres that have been sourced using the above farming methods that are practicing Regenerative Agriculture. Though there are Regenerative Wool, and Regenerative Hemp out in the market, the material taking the lead here is Regenerative Cotton. Some brands who have already explored using organic cotton include: Patagonia, North Face, and Organic Basics.
Though organic cotton was the first answer to the water waste and chemical use of the virgin cotton industry, it only accounts for less than 1% of the cotton production today with little room to scale. Now brands are looking into Regenerative Cotton as another approach to doing better in the fashion industry, reduce their carbon footprint and creating a positive impact for the environment.
We as consumers can remain educated and critical of this new term “regenerative” to not only know how we can define “regenerative clothing” for ourselves, but also hold fashion brands accountable and raise the expectation for where the fibres in our clothes are coming from. Now, as we begin to understand the intersectional issues in modern production systems, fashion brands cannot afford to aim to do “less harm” but must take this opportunity in sourcing regenerative fibres to have a positive impact on the environment by putting ecosystems and humans at it’s core.