Cultivating Sustainability: An Examination of Policy, Practice and Industry Adoption in India's Organic Cotton Sector

Abstract

The idea is that organic agriculture is a growing area and has a significant presence across the world. Given the importance of this space and the positive effects that it can have on humankind and the environment largely, there is a need to understand the key theoretical frameworks that outline the importance and effects of organic and sustainable agriculture. In fact, theories that look at the translation of organic agriculture from policy to practice are the focus. In the process of popularizing organic agriculture and its multi-fold benefits, the landscape has evolved to include the standards that need to be followed to call the product from the plant origin organic. The research looks at the Indian standards (NPOP) and its evolution since its inception in 2001 closely and compares the same with the widely recognized standards such as USDA, EU organic and JAS. The analysis depicts how the initial focus of NPOP and its formulation was highly influenced by these recognized international standards, catering to the export goal of organic products. The impact of organic agriculture and inception of the first version of NPOP is highly limited to maintaining compliance and attaining equivalence with USA and EU. It was viewed merely as an economic opportunity rather than making agriculture sustainable. The lack of context specificity is one of the major challenges of NPOP certification since it excluded a key portion of the farmer community, the smallholder farmers from benefitting from the process. In the following section challenges of NPOP certification are comprehensively dealt with in greater detail from the inspection and certification decision officers’ perspective. To better understand the challenges and practical limitations of NPOP, it is contextualized in the organic cotton sector. Stakeholder contexts and capacity, financial barriers, operational barriers, institutional barriers, market and reputational impacts are identified as some of the pressing challenges. These can be overcome by the policy harmonization, capacity building, innovative digital traceability solutions, and adequate support mechanisms according to the interviewed stakeholders. However, the story of NPOP certification doesn’t end with identifying and solving the challenges. Especially in a non-fmcg, intermediate product line like cotton, which further undergoes processing before it turns into a consumable good, the responsibility of NPOP extends to later stages. Recognizing the nature of organic cotton, the final section deals with the later stage of supply chain that is its adoption by the textile industry in the form of organic sourcing of raw material. Additionally, this section also looks at the general conditions and factors that influence integration of sustainability in the business strategies. The analysis of the ESG reports and BRSR frameworks of the select textile companies against parameters like organic sourcing, waste management, etc. presents some gaps in the translation of policy objectives of NPOP into practice. These include inconsistencies in reporting, and lack of standardized metrics for reporting in most of the indicators.