U.S. REGENERATIVE COTTON FUND SOIL HEALTH INSTITUTE

In recent years, the move to be sustainable has gained momentum across all types of industries, including fashion and apparel. Regenerative farming is not only changing growing practices and helping improve the lives of farmers, it replenishes the soil and the nature surrounding it. Cotton farmers’ use of regenerative practices can increase carbon sequestration, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce erosion and improve their soil’s drought resilience. Funding from The VF Foundation supported the U.S. Regenerative Cotton Fund (USRCF), which will help advance the adoption of soil health management systems across more than one million acres of U.S. cotton cropland. This unique, farmer-facing, science-based initiative not only supports long-term, regenerative cotton production in the United States, its goal is to eliminate one million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) from the atmosphere by 2026. This initiative aligns with VF’s global sustainability efforts and its roadmap to meet its scope 3 science-based targets by taking a farmercentric, regenerative approach to scale cotton growing practices and measure their impacts. The VF Foundation is also helping to power USRCF’s first internship class dedicated to establishing career paths for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and empowering them to be leaders and decision-makers in U.S. agriculture.