Uzbekistan and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) carry out a project on the production of socially responsible and environmentally sustainable cotton.
The key objective of the project is to create a sustainable business model for Uzbekistan to cultivate the cotton that would meet the requirements of Better Cotton Initiative (BCI). Many well-known brands of knitted products like H&M, Levi’s, Adidas, Nike and others purchase raw cotton, which is grown to the BCI program aims at improving the methods of cotton cultivation, including the mitigation of the impact of cotton production on the environment and human health.
According to representatives of the International Finance Corporation, the use of the BCI methodology will enable the Uzbek farmers to increase the volumes of cotton, while reducing its cost, and allow textile producers strengthening their positions in the global market.
At present, over 54,000 farms are involved in the cultivation of the ‘white gold’ in Uzbekistan. Annually, they produce over 3 million tons of raw cotton. 33 out of 86 cotton-producing countries in the world annually harvest more than 100,000 tons of raw cotton, and only eight countries gather more than one million tons. In the last five years, Uzbekistan has been ranking the world’s sixth largest producer, and the fifth exporter of cotton fiber.
