Corporate Responsibility Manager Lavinia Muth is supporting small-scale farmers transition to organic practices via her work at fair fashion brand Armedangels.

LAVINIA’s journey

Lavinia says she’s not a ‘technical textile person’ but through her work experience — which includes eight years at a consultancy specializing in the implementation of social and ecological standard requirements in the textile industry — she’s gotten a sense of how the industry works and what it’s all about. Now, she’s the Corporate Responsibility Manager at Armedangels.

It was founded 14 years ago by Martin Hoefeler and Anton Jurina, and since day one, we've been Fairtrade certified. Thanks to Fairtrade, we’ve had traceability and transparency in the cotton supply chain since day one. We work with organic cotton and other sustainable and circular materials like organic wool, LENZING™ ECOVERO™, recycled plastic, and kapok… We know each and every step in our supply chain and we also know the raw material origin for our materials. This traceability and transparency in our supply chains are one of our big credibility points.’

THE PROBLEMS LAVINIA IS TACKLING

The focus on wages. ‘Everybody always talks about wages but independent farmers get paid for the raw material. Our customers are always asking, “do the farmers get a fair wage?” and I'm like, “They don't get any wage! They get paid per kilogram, because they are independent farmers”. The prices of cotton are negotiated in a kind of stock market and a small-scale farmer with one acre of land is dependent on more or less the same market price as a big cooperative. The whole system is not fair at all, which is why we have to set up a different, disruptive system so people receive enough money and a fair price for their precious raw material.’

The need for a business case for organic cotton. ‘We wanted to dig a little deeper into the problems of the organic cotton market: Why is there not an increasing volume of land being converted into organic? Why is there still so much conventional cotton? What are the actual challenges on the ground, and in the field? We realized that basically, the business case is not given. Not for small-scale farmers nor for bigger companies. Knowledge on regenerative, inclusive and organic farming methods is more intense than generic, conventional farming, and we have been told that yields are lower due to the quality of seeds and lacking best-practice farm management. Plus, the organic premium is just a joke — in India, the premium has been decreasing, from approximately 20% thirteen years ago, to 4% or 5% now. The Fairtrade system is a good system when it comes to premium because a premium of five euro cents per kg of seedcotton is guaranteed. But, is this enough to make a good living as a farmer?’

How difficult traceability can be. ‘I'm no textile person, so I didn't actually know how a yarn is made and how difficult it is. That actually, at least 10 different sources are involved and that at the ginning and spinning stages, the cotton is mixed. It’s just not possible to nominate a field in India and to expect that exact cotton. And there is no centralized system to track certification. We have established a physical track and trace system based on the nominated supply chains we have established. We are still a small brand with 14 first-tier suppliers and about 170 players in our whole supply chain. But we’re growing and can’t handle this by collecting transaction certificates and XML files. We need a safe and secure system for traceability and real-time tracking.’’

Armedangels’ SOLUTIONS

Investing in organic cotton conversion. ‘With a partner in India, we have founded our own internal control system, our own small ICS cooperative. Through it, we are supporting 507 small-scale farming families in India to convert 7,040,000 m² from conventional to organic cotton. We pay a small premium during the conversion years to motivate the farmers to stay in the system. If everything goes well, we will be certified organic this year in May. This project currently produces the equivalent of about 45% of our overall organic cotton uptake per year, though for now we haven't introduced it directly into our supply chain and it's instead sold into the local market. The idea is to eventually implement a mass-balance system once the ICS is certified. Additionally, starting with the 2021/2022 harvest, we will implement our own FairPaid Cotton powered by ARMEDANGELS program which will provide a purchase guarantee for blocked cotton and a premium’

Using blockchain to support traceability. ‘Last year, we started two pilots with Textile Genesis™ who have established a blockchain solution for tracing and tracking supply chains on fiber-level. One was LENZING™ ECOVERO™ and the other one with our nominated organic wool from Argentina. Our partner in Argentina has several farms and only 11 of the 20 are RWS-certified. I was hoping our ECOVERO™ was really from Austria and our organic wool was from one of the nominated farms and luckily it was! And I was like, okay, this is working. I must admit, I don't understand a lot about technology. I couldn't explain to you how the blockchain works. But I know our pilots worked and we’re launching it for all our LENZING™ ECOVERO™ and organic wool, and our next step is to look at organic cotton.’

Treating suppliers as partners. ‘We all know how this industry works. Normally, it's always the suppliers, who pay for everything in advance: fabrics, components, and so on. This has become even clearer in the pandemic. We’ve realized that in some cases we can support our suppliers how they’ve always supported us, by blocking fabrics, and prices and so on.’

Being comfortable with higher prices. ‘Normally brands are happy when raw material prices drop and fibers and yarns and fabrics get cheaper. This was obviously the case for Armed Angels but now we have such direct contact with the people harvesting things are different. There are not only commodities but livelihoods and emotions involved. We care about our partners and so think it's good when the raw material prices rise; when the value is created where it should be created. So that's super interesting, psychologically, for us as a company. Somehow we have to meet in the middle.’ 

Passing the mic. ‘I think it is very important that we actually listen to the people who actually know what’s going on and give the farmers a voice. Two years ago, we had an Instagram Q&A session about handpicking and farmer incomes and then we just gave the farmers the mic. The farmers were explaining, ‘I don't earn a wage, I earn per kg, and in the organic system, I get a premium.’

Learn more

• What is Fair Trade cotton?

• Where can I learn more about Armedangels’ materials?

• Who do Armedangels work with in India?

Greetings from: Cologne, Germany & Gujarat, India.

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