True Living Magazine: Jeanne Carver Leads the Charge For A More Sustainable Wool Industry
By Blaire Dessent
For TLMagazine Spring/Summer Issue 2021
With a back-to-the-land approach that considers the betterment of the Earth’s future, Jeanne Carver has been a force in the wool and textile industry for over two decades.
Along with her husband Dan Carver, Jeanne owns and operates the Imperial Stock Ranch, a 15,000-hectre ranch located in the quiet, yet breath-taking high desert of north-central Oregon. The ranch traces its roots as a sheep and livestock farm back to 1871, when nearby Shaniko, Oregon would soon become the wool shipping capital of the world. Since taking over the ranch in the mid-1980s, the couple has reinvigorated the land in many ways, including restoring creeks to help bring back the wild salmon which had all but disappeared, and the farm’s economy thanks to Carver’s entrepreneurial spirit. In 1999, their wool buyer, with whom the farm had worked with for 100 years, stopped sourcing wool from them because it was now less expensive to manufacture overseas. Carver, unafraid of a challenge and determined to keep the land open to sheep, moved them out of commodity wool sales, transforming their efforts from ‘ranch to runway,’ as she says, starting a thriving company that provided wool yarns, apparel, home décor, as well as production yarn to brand partners. The Imperial Stock Ranch not only employed the local community, bringing a new economy to the rural region, but also promoted sustainable wool farming and yarns at a time when the trend was to buy cheaper, unverified product overseas. In 15 years, Carver set up a cradle-to-cradle business model that was ‘about the harvest’, as she says, and included (among many styles) woven, felted, crochet, knitted, and whole garment knitting with 3D design; she also sold the meat to high-end restaurants and resorts and cured the skins to create shearling products. “Wool is a miracle fibre”, Carvers states. “Traditional skills that have clothed humankind and produced our art are as important today as they were thousands of years ago. We are disconnected from that today and don’t appreciate the process like we once did; but it is essential to our culture and continued strength as a country”.
Time & trends finally caught up with Imperial Stock Ranch when, in 2012, they were asked by Ralph Lauren to supply the wool for the 2014 US Olympic team uniforms. Ralph Lauren ‘told the story’ of Imperial Stock Ranch and opened the door for an overwhelming number of new collaborations with household brands such as J.Crew, Ethan Allen, Room & Board, and importantly, with Patagonia, who in 2015 was looking to work with a 3rd party certified wool supplier after having undergone challenges in their wool supply chain. Patagonia had just begun working on the Responsible Wool Standard (RWS) with the global non-profit Textile Exchange an asked for Imperial Stock Ranch to be a pilot audit site for RWS. This relationship led to the ranch becoming the first in the world to be officially certified with the RWS. The Responsible Wool Standard is a “voluntary standard that addresses the welfare of sheep and the land they graze on,” as the website states. Overseen by Textile Exchange, RWS has emerged at a time when attention to the waste and polluting effects of the textile industry have (finally) come under scrutiny. The RWS requires that all players, from the sheep farmer to the suppliers, follow a set of standards that ensure that they are truly practicing sustainable methods. The traceability issue is most important and this certificate is essential for companies who want and need to prove traceability, such as Patagonia. While it adds paperwork and expense, the payoffs to farms and the environment is clear.
Soon after receiving the RWS and at the peak of its game, Carver sold the wool products company as her husband’s health was declining and she couldn’t be on the road and maintain its demand. But she never stopped receiving calls from brands looking for a ‘traceable and sustainable’ wool supply. So, in the fall of 2018 she launched Shaniko Wool Company to focus only on the fibre supply, helping farms become RWS certified, purchasing their wool and supplying it to buyers and brands who appreciate this approach. “For people who produce food and fibre, it feels really good to know where your life’s work and harvest end up”, says Carver. And while the American Sheep Industry, the national organization in the U.S., was not interested in supporting this international standard, Carver went out and did it on her own, becoming a certified farm group that prepares and audits the farms so they can become a certified supplier. Carver feels strongly that having standards like RWS are essential. “When a company asks you, ‘how are you sustainable – how does that work?’ do you just ask them to take your word for it? It helps to have a 3rd party verify your practices; it gives credibility, builds trust and helps a brand reduce their risk. When a PR nightmare appears in their supply chain, this is a big issue in our culture. Standards are important to customers and we are helping contribute to brand loyalty.” While fast-fashion is dubiously attempting to show transparency and take higher ecological standards, Shaniko Wool Company is a vehicle for allowing brands to confidently implement sustainable practices in their sourcing.
In 2020, Carver took her journey one-step further, starting the Shaniko Wool Company Carbon Initiative. The project took root after a well-known brand with whom Carver had worked with during earlier days in her fibre journey, said to her, ‘so you have the RWS certificate but are your practices beneficial to the Earth? ’Carver was understandably irked but also, once again, motivated to take action. The Carbon Initiative takes RWS one step further by establishing a way to measure direct climate impacts with carbon as a key performance indicator. With the help of scientists, sampling and data analysis along with 3rd party verification Shaniko Wool Company can show how their farms are adding value to the earth in a tangible way.
“I believe the greatest deliverable we in agriculture bring to the community, is not just food, clothing and shelter, enabling our survival, but the ecosystem services – the positive benefits. By drawing down carbon out of the atmosphere and banking it in our soil and grasslands, we provide an important benefit which is generally not measured, appreciated nor recognized. My hope is this initiative will bring added economic benefits to the growers.” If the Responsible Wool Standard (RWS) has given the textile industry a framework within which they can begin to make purposeful and lasting change, it is through the passionate and proactive individuals, likeCarver, who take initiative and make the process accessible, that it begins to feel promising that we will see standards and 3rd party certifications as the only way forward for farms and fashion.
More of Jeanne’s story will be featured in her book coming out in October, 2021, titled, “Stories of Fashion,Textiles and Place: Evolving Sustainable Supply Chains,”published by Bloomsbury Publishing of London.
