How do we ensure environmental protection and a sustainable future for the Indian farmers we work with?

Most textile brands around the world struggle to identify the country of origin of their cotton. We do know the villages, farmers and communities that grow and harvest our beautiful long-staple cotton. And we value the relationship we have with them!
Our cotton is Egyptian cotton with extra long fibres of 50-60 mm, enabling us to produce Satin and Percale in real 300TC.

When we choose our raw materials – in this case, cotton for our top-of-the-range collections – we pay uncompromising attention to two things: that they are organically grown (organic certification, GOTS – which is by far the best), and that the farmers work under fair and healthy conditions (Fairtrade certification, which is the only fair trade certification for cotton).

We carefully select our cotton-growing farms and linen-manufacturing factories through site visits. We build long-term relationships with our partners, respecting them as if they were part of our team.

In 2016, when Bruno founded Kalani, he chose to work with a ‘best practice’ organic and Fairtrade cotton cooperative in India. Meeting our quality requirements as well as our environmental and social commitments, this cooperative represents an ideal partner. The cotton used in Kalani bed linen is bought directly from this cooperative, without any intermediaries, to guarantee them a fair price for each kilo of cotton grown. But that’s not all…

What is a cooperative? How does it work?

A farmers’ cooperative is a company set up by farmers, collectively owned and managed by them under a system of governance. Fairtrade requires farmers to form groups or cooperatives. As well as providing support for their members and creating commercial opportunities, these structures help to create a solid social network and improve services (training, education, health, etc.) within the communities.

Our partner cooperative employs over 10,000 small farmers, training them and encouraging them to adopt the best practices of organic farming. These practices can now be described as ‘regenerative agriculture’, because not only are they GMO and chemical input free (no pesticides, fertilisers or artificial, toxic weedkillers), but they also take into account all the surrounding biodiversity. For example, local trees can be planted to demarcate fields, animal dung can be used to enrich the soil, and planting sites and periods can be chosen so as to encourage natural rain irrigation.

Kalani and the cooperative: a partnership relationship

To ensure high quality cotton and the sustainable development of the farms that grow it, we have joined forces with other small and medium-sized brands from Europe, America, Japan and Australia.
Our direct relationship and partnership with the organic cotton farmers (via the local cooperative) allows us to know and communicate fairly and transparently about the origin of our products.

It also allows us to decide the price we pay for the cotton we buy. On average, Kalani pays the cooperative 13.5% above the Fairtrade Premium for organic and Fairtrade cotton. The local communities can then invest in their own development, the pillars of which are training, education and health. To illustrate, this is 26% more expensive than organic cotton elsewhere, and around 46% more expensive than conventional cotton (i.e. non-organic cotton). Read our blog post here for more information.

In addition to the price aspect, we make volume commitments to the local cooperative 1 year in advance. This allows the farmers to plan their work and organise the cotton crops, and also helps the cooperative to obtain local credit to finance the organic cotton seeds. If these local loans are not enough, we sometimes pre-finance the purchase of organic cotton seeds 1 or even 2 years in advance. This way, we provide security for the farmers, preventing them from falling “into the trap” of the GMO seed multinationals, which would mean losing their organic certification and all their past efforts in the ecological transition. As you can see, we support farmers for them, but also for ourselves. Because yes, we want to continue working with them. And if they lose their organic certification, we will be forced to leave them.

This cooperative is considered ‘Best Practice’ because it has been supervised by European NGOs for its first ten years. Its governance model is unique, and the reinvestment of amounts paid and donated by customers in local communities is also almost unique in the world.

In the textile sector, production chains are generally long and made up of numerous intermediaries. As we have read, by greatly limiting the number of ‘links’ in this chain, Kalani has full control over what happens and is informed of the origin of its products and the conditions under which they are created, while allowing optimum traceability, beyond that of certifications. This also enables us to fulfil our Duty of Vigilance in our supply chain.

Is it good environmental practice to produce in India?

Unsurprisingly, cotton does not grow in all types of climate. Tropical and subtropical regions offer the ideal climatic conditions for growing cotton, with warm temperatures, plenty of sunlight, moderate rainfall and well-drained soils. These conditions enable cotton to grow healthily and productively.

Since the cotton used in Kalani’s sateen, percale and cotton jersey bed linen comes from India, it seems obvious to us that the place where it is spun, woven, dyed and made is also in India, for ethical and ecological reasons.

There’s no miracle: for people in Europe to wear cotton clothes or sleep on cotton sheets, the raw material (cotton), the yarn, the fabrics or the finished products must be imported from the country where the cotton is grown. Europe (Greece and Spain) produces 2% of the world’s cotton. However, it is of average quality and this production does not meet the continent’s needs.

At Kalani, our ethics have naturally led us to leave the added value linked to their white gold to the country of origin of the raw material. We do not wish to adopt a neo-colonialist attitude by ‘stealing’ raw materials at low prices in order to import them and continue the work at home.

We asked ourselves whether this solution was also a good choice from an ecological point of view. And the answer is yes! As you can read in more detail in this article on our blog, the average CO2 impact is: 
– 46-58% higher when importing a container of fine cotton rather than a container of finished sheets (production waste from spinning, weaving, cutting and making-up),
– 21-28% higher when importing a container of cotton yarn rather than a container of finished sheets (production waste from weaving, cutting and making-up),
– 13-18% higher when importing a container of rolls of cotton fabric rather than a container of finished sheets (production waste – cutting and making up).

Kalani: an ethical and ecological vision

Ecology, ethics, transparency, quality and fair prices sum up the way we have grown Kalani. This is also the way we want to continue the adventure!