A field does not become organic on the day the farmer decides it will. There is a waiting period first, and it runs longer than most people expect. In the European Union the conversion period for an annual crop is twenty four months. In India and the United States it is thirty six. Cotton sown before that clock has run out is grown under every organic rule there is, and it still cannot be sold as organic.
In short · 4 min read
- A field needs 24 months in the EU, and 36 in India and the US, to become organic.
- Cotton grown in those years is called cotton in conversion.
- What our jersey and fleece are made of, weight by weight.
The rules apply from the first day of the period, not the last. No synthetic pesticides, no synthetic fertiliser, no genetically modified seed, and the record keeping that goes with all of it. What the farmer does in month three is the same as what they will do in month thirty seven. The crop that comes off the field in those middle years has its own name. It is called cotton in conversion, or transitional cotton, depending on who is writing.
The arithmetic is the interesting part. A farm in conversion carries the cost of organic production, the cost of certification itself, the training, the investment in changing how the land is worked, and the extra risk that comes with doing something new on ground that has not yet rebuilt its own fertility. Yields often fall before they recover. All of that is paid in the conversion years, and for those years the cotton sells at the price of ordinary cotton, because that is what the certificate says it is. Textile Exchange, which runs the standards most of the industry uses, puts the problem plainly: the gap between what conversion costs and what conversion earns is the reason so many farms never begin.
That is a narrow claim, and narrow is the point.
What closes the gap is a buyer. Not a subsidy and not a pledge, but somebody who will take the crop during those years and pay for the practice rather than the paperwork. Textile Exchange's own suggestion to brands is modest and practical: blend a share of transitional fibre into something you already make regularly. It raises the supply of organic cotton and the demand for it at the same time, and the cost lands softly because it is spread across a whole programme rather than concentrated in one product.
There is a fair question underneath all of this, which is whether cotton in conversion should be allowed to say anything at all on a label. The honest answer is that the phrase is doing something quite specific. It names the stage the field is in. It does not round the field up to organic, and it does not quietly drop the subject either. Anyone reading it learns that the farm is inside the period, farming to organic rules, and not yet through it. That is a narrow claim, and narrow is the point.
Most of our own jersey comes from farms inside that period. The unisex T-shirt and the long sleeve are 175gsm cotton in conversion. The two oversized cuts are 180gsm combed cotton, also in conversion and named as such. The fitted cut is 175gsm from farms that have already come out the other side and hold full organic certification. Written down, the difference between them is a line on a certificate. In the hand, the difference you actually notice is the weight, because five grams per square metre changes how a shirt falls more than any of this does.
The only thing missing is time, and time is the one input that cannot be bought forward.
The fleece is a different conversation, and worth being straight about. A hoodie asks something of the cloth that cotton alone does not do especially well, which is to hold its shape through a few hundred wearings. Ours are blends. The crewneck sweatshirt and the organic hoodie are 280gsm, eighty per cent organic cotton with twenty per cent recycled polyester. The recycled blend hoodie is the same weight and the same twenty per cent, with conventional cotton alongside it, and it comes in the widest size range we make. The heaviest is 450gsm, which is a genuinely warm garment and reads as one the moment you pick it up.
Stand at the edge of a field in its second year and there is nothing to see. The soil is being rebuilt, the beneficial insects are coming back, the farmer is keeping records nobody has asked for yet. It looks like an organic field because it is being farmed as one. The only thing missing is time, and time is the one input that cannot be bought forward.
Which leaves the buying decision in a slightly unusual place. The cotton with the full certificate is the finished thing, and the cotton without it is the part of the process that still needs somebody to show up for it.
Sources
- Textile Exchange. In-Conversion to Organic: The Basics.
A quiet extension of this idea
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