Shaniko Wool’s Carbon Initiative Featured in Textile Exchange’s Regenerative Agriculture Report

Textile Exchange has created a landmark framework for the fashion and textile industries to understand, communicate, and invest in regenerative agriculture through its 2022 regenerative agriculture report.

Shaniko Wool’s efforts to obtain data and proof of our member ranches’ regenerative impacts with our Carbon Initiative model are detailed in the report. The Shaniko model includes a rigorous soil and biomass sampling protocol across all seven ranches in the Shaniko Wool Company Farm Group.

Collecting this data involves:

• Monitoring 250 separate sites across 1.5 million acres

• Measuring soil to a depth of 20 cm at every site, and to 40-60 cm at every fifth site

• Measuring biomass at every site

• Taking these samples in the early growing season and post growing season, and analyzing them at state-of-the-art laboratories

• Using computer models to determine total inputs and calculation of net carbon budgets

• Utilizing results to influence future management decisions

Media coverage of the report:

Regenerative Agriculture ‘Fundamental’ for Fashion, Says Textile Exchange Report – Women’s Wear Daily

Regenerative Agriculture ‘Fundamental’ for Fashion, Says Textile Exchange Report – Yahoo! Life

Textile Exchange releases Regenerative Agriculture Landscape Analysis – TEXtalks

Regenerative Agriculture ‘Fundamental’ for Fashion, Says Textile Exchange Report #324 – Paris Good Fashion

Key takeaways from the report:

• A transition to regenerative agriculture is fundamental for the fashion and textile industries. The long-term health of the sector will depend on how it is able to work with farmers to develop more resilient systems, and regenerative practices offer immense social and environmental benefits, too.

• Regenerative agriculture can’t be defined in a single statement or set of practices. It is contextual and nuanced, and instead calls for a fundamentally holistic systems approach that puts humans and ecosystems at its core.

• Programs should be rooted in justice, equity and livelihoods. 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 agriculture is about much more than increasing soil carbon levels. While evolving soil science is calling into question exactly how long-term soil carbon sequestration works, holistic regenerative systems have documented interdependent co-benefits related to biodiversity, water availability and quality, climate resilience, and livelihoods.

• We need to move out of silos to speed up the transition. To advance the field of regenerative agriculture overall, apparel, textile, and footwear companies should also increase information sharing with the food and beverage sector, ensuring that apparel brands influence the latest policy developments, financing models and research initiatives.