The Climate Beneficial™ Cotton program is designed to scale the implementation of carbon farming practices and verified through Fibershed and now Seed2Shirt team – as the Southeast implementation partner and lead. Producers annually implement carbon farming practices and report the details of their practices. Practice implementation data is used to calculate estimations for the climate impact of each practice using regional peer-reviewed research and/or COMET Planner, an open-source carbon drawdown modeling tool. Carbon metrics for each farm and ranch are aggregated and tracked in a backend database, which allows us to provide up-to-date greenhouse gas measurements to our partners who are utilizing Climate Beneficial fiber (cotton and wool).
To become fully Climate Beneficial Verified, producers have a formal Carbon Farm Plan written for their land and operations. This is a comprehensive planning process developed by the Carbon Cycle Institute that involves farm and ranch soil mapping, site analysis, an extensive evaluation of all potential opportunities for additional carbon capture, and quantification of the carbon impacts of these potential practices. Farmers gain access to a technical service provider who will work with them to write a Carbon Farm Plan.
The Carbon Farm Plan functions as a road map for land stewards to follow. Each year producers operationalize their Carbon Farm Plan and implement new beneficial carbon farming practices and provide continual improvement on existing practices.
