How Timberland, Vans are making sure their cotton isn’t ‘greenwashed’

As the harvest season finished at the end of January in Haiti, retail giant VF Corp. made a notable purchase: what is believed to be the first-ever verified regenerative cotton crop grown in the country. 

For the holding company behind brands like Timberland, The North Face, Supreme and Vans, the purchase was significant. For one, it signaled a broader approach to sustainable farming, evolving from an earlier focus on organic cotton — where the emphasis is on the elimination of inputs including pesticides and synthetic fertilizers — to regenerative cotton agriculture practices, which place greater importance on soil health, water retention, and local economic benefits, in addition to the chemical input management.

Timberland had already reintroduced cotton to Haiti following a 30-year absence from the country in collaboration with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, a nonprofit that establishes farmer cooperatives. After five years of study and field experiments, the company introduced its first products made with Haitian-grown organic cotton in the spring of 2021, including two types of sneakers and a tote bag. But the focus quickly moved to regenerative agriculture, a practice more activist shareholders are pressing with big consumer companies. 

“Regenerative agriculture is really important to Timberland and VF because it’s about restoring the soil,” said Atlanta McIlwraith, Timberland’s director of social impact and activation. “We feel like it’s a way to directly address climate change. I think a lot of brands talk about sustainability, and we do as well, but if you think about sustainability, it’s really about doing no harm and maintaining things as they are. And regenerative is really drawing a line that’s higher.”

Behind the scenes, there is another notable aspect to the agricultural first related to technology. With support for Timberland, VF Corp. and VF Foundation, the Smallholder Farmers Alliance worked with Terra Genesis — a Thailand-based firm that VF just announced this week it has a collaboration with on sourcing regenerative rubber — and the Data Economics Company to create a farm data tracking service to verify regenerative cotton crops.

When a farmer decides to work with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, a local agronomist will start coming to their farm and collecting data on regenerative farming, as well as establishing the standards that these farms must meet. If a farm passes the survey, farmers profit not only from the cotton sale, but from the data that verifies the cotton is regenerative.

VF Corp’s efforts with regenerative cotton in Haiti come at a time of growing pressure from consumers for companies to adopt more sustainable practices.

Three out of five consumers in a recent survey claimed that at least half of their last purchase consisted of socially responsible or sustainable products,…