Prime Cotton: Visualising Upstream Emissions across a 45,000 Hectare Footprint

As a major cotton producer, Prime Cotton aimed to strengthen its commitment to responsible cotton sourcing by working to decarbonize operations across its extensive 45,000 hectares of cotton farms and engage with over 7,000 farmers.

Prime Cotton recently partnered with Terrascope to assess emissions from its upstream cotton cultivation and ginning processes, including from farms and ginning mills. The process began with the collection of primary activity data for cotton farming and ginning, followed by product-level emissions calculation using Terrascope’s AI-powered capabilities.

Over the multi-week process, Terrascope and Prime Cotton worked together to ensure better data quality, address data gaps, and gain deeper insights into emissions hotspots. This partnership allowed Prime Cotton to benchmark its cotton against global averages, with improved accounting and data practices for future emissions measurement. Through its granular carbon footprint, the cotton producer could now shed light on more decarbonization opportunities it could undertake.

About Prime Cotton

Prime Cotton LLC is a subsidiary of GP Cotton, a vertically-integrated cotton business that consists of agricultural field operations managing 45,000 hectares of planted cotton, 11 cotton processing centres (gins), 3 yarn production units, and 1 textile weaving/apparel complex. Prime Cotton has more than 25 years of experience in Azerbaijan. The company's main activity is the cultivation, supply, and subsequent processing of cotton in ginneries. The area farmed includes 5,000 hectares of company managed land and around 40,000 hectares of contracted land with a constituency of 7,000 farmers. The company also owns a mechanization fleet of around 200 combines, 800 tractors, and associated implements. A subsidiary of Prime, Mingachevir Textile Park (MTP), focuses on yarn production from the cotton fibre produced by Prime. Serving customers – up to and including – High Street fashion, regular brick-and-mortar brands and department stores, Prime Cotton is strengthening its commitments around the responsible sourcing of cotton, making efforts to decarbonise their operations. The company is enhancing its approach to sustainable cotton practices with a focus on supporting farmers, preserving the value of cotton, and ensuring its legacy for future generations.

Prime Cotton’s Journey

Assessing the climate impact of Prime’s cotton would involve measurement of the cotton producer’s own farms, outgrower farms, and ginning mills. Doing so across its extensive footprint posed several key hurdles to be crossed. These hurdles were:

1. Conducting farm-specific calculation: Calculating farm-level emissions posed significant challenges due to the need for highly detailed data collection and complex calculations. This includes multiple emission sources such as land use change, agricultural inputs, fertilizer use, irrigation energy, on-farm machinery, and crop-residue management, all of which are technically challenging to estimate.

2. Allocating emissions between multiple crops grown on farms: Prime’s farms grows multiple crops such as barley and wheat, in addition to cotton. Thus, in the absence of granular data, aggregated agricultural inputs likes fertilizers and pesticides needed to be allocated across different crops using best-effort, science-based estimates through extensive literature research.

3. Allocating emissions across multiple cotton products: When raw cotton is processed in the ginning mill, it yields multiple cotton products, including cotton fiber, cotton seeds, and other by-products. This project addressed this challenge by allocating emissions to these different cotton products based on the economic value.

4. Handling large volumes of data in various formats and languages: It was a significant achievement to utilize the primary data collected across 45,000 hectares of cotton farms, 7,000 individual farmers, and 11 cotton gins. The volume of collected data is substantial and consists of multiple data formats and languages.

Despite these hurdles, Prime Cotton worked with Terrascope to formalize repeatable, future-ready practices for emissions measurement year after year. Committed to ensuring that its metrics are backed by real, actionable data to support its sustainability strategy, Prime Cotton is making decarbonization a core part of its ongoing operations.

Prime Cotton’s Successes with Terrascope

Prime Cotton partnered with Terrascope, as its decarbonisation platform of choice, to assess the emissions generated by its cotton production up to the ginning mill.

Relying on Terrascope’s data expertise, the cotton producer’s network of over 7,000 farmers contributed primary data points, including agricultural inputs, land polygon data, fuel usage for farm machinery, and electricity for irrigation. Emission factors were then matched with AI models to calculate total emissions, which were subsequently allocated across the entire farm production. The results of Prime’s raw cotton benchmarking against conventional cotton from around different global regions is shown in the table below.

Delving into the data, Terrascope helped Prime Cotton understand that at several life stages, Prime Cotton’s raw cotton emissions are comparable to global benchmarks, while its land-use change (LUC) emissions are lower than average given a large share of its outgrower farms have been operational for over 20 years.

Additionally, the results for Prime’s Cotton Fiber benchmarking against cotton fiber against global are as follows:

Prime Cotton has 12% lower emissions than the global average per kilogram of raw cotton at the farm gate, which is the primary input for cotton fiber. However, at the fiber stage, Prime Cotton’s emissions are only 0.5% lower than the global average because it requires more raw cotton input per kilogram of fiber. Specifically, to generate 1 kg of cotton fiber, Prime Cotton uses 2.37 kg of raw cotton, compared to the global average of 2.08 kg. Additionally, Prime Cotton has higher emission intensity for electricity and natural gas usage in the ginning process, highlighting potential opportunities for efficiency improvement and decarbonisation. Offering analysis incorporating Prime Cotton's efficiency, Terrascope then used its proprietary data transformation models and Al capabilities to visualise its overall emissions footprint, helping the cotton grower with receiving results. This allowed the sustainable cotton producer to identify data gaps, and assess overall input footprint across its extensive presence. By the end of this process, Prime Cotton could confidently represent itself in its production of sustainable cotton, operationalising emissions accounting in a fast, scalable manner.

01. Sustainable Cotton of Choice

Prime Cotton's raw cotton and cotton fiber have a lower carbon intensity than the global average. With a carbon intensity of 0.873 kg CO₂e, Prime Cotton's raw cotton is 12.3% lower than conventional cotton. This lower emissions intensity in raw cotton contributes to a lower emissions intensity for cotton fiber, at 2.161 kg CO₂e. Across upstream stages, Prime Cotton’s raw cotton emissions are comparable to global benchmarks, while its land-use change (LUC) and irrigation baseline emissions are lower than average. Textile firms around the world are clamoring for sustainable cotton – with 72% of respondents in a recent report around sustainable cotton identifying that their supply chains demand sustainable cotton. There is strong demand for sustainable cotton, and Prime Cotton can now stand out amongst other producers with its granular data.

02. Stronger Data Regimes

Terrascope's data collection processes laid the groundwork for enhanced data practices in the future. With Terrascope’s ability to transform primary data at scale and manage complex data formats, Prime Cotton achieved higher accuracy and increased emissions granularity, which in turn improved transparency and accountability across its products.

03. Future-proofing Emissions Visibility

Prime Cotton's partnership with Terrascope, a GHG Protocol and ISO 14064, ISO 27001:2022 certified platform, ensures that its measurement and emissions reports are backed by credible, reproducible science-based data that aligns with best practices around relevant accounting methodology. This partnership delivered substantial value to Prime Cotton, extending beyond just the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) data for each cotton product.

The Value for Prime Cotton

By partnering with Terrascope, Prime Cotton unlocked value in four distinct ways:

Creating better transparency around sustainable cotton

Prime Cotton can now clearly communicate their product carbon footprint, differentiating their product through transparency and credibility. Downstream users of cotton produced by Prime Cotton, including textile and apparel companies, can similarly integrate the custom emissions factor into their own emissions calculations. In an industry where emissions visibility is king, 68% of respondents in Verdantix and Terrascope’s recent analysis of sustainable cotton prioritised supply chain transparency as top-of-mind when procuring sustainable cotton.

Improved data methodologies

Prime’s custom emissions factors facilitate precise reporting of Scope 3 emissions across its supply chain. Their ease of use allows Prime to conduct farm-level calculations using primary data on agricultural inputs and practices. This positions Prime Cotton as a leading sustainable cotton producer that works with its partners in their sustainability journey. Terrascope’s methodology has allowed the cotton producer to achieve better data outcomes that are not only accurate, but auditable as well.

Avoiding opaque, yearly manual emissions measurement

Prime Cotton can now confidently measure its emissions footprint annually. With its own custom emissions factor tailored to Azerbaijan’s cotton sector agricultural practices, the company can avoid the unnecessary costs of inaccurate yearly assessments and continue working with its existing partners to assess its emissions visibility. Terrascope’s thorough data capabilities have cut through the haze and visualised Prime Cotton’s emissions drivers. Further, Prime can also now compare the productivity of their innovation farms and outgrower farmers, identifying performers, and opportunities for effective decarbonisation.

Focusing decarbonisation strategy as a competitive cotton producer

The demand for sustainable cotton has never been higher. In a recent Terrascope and Verdantix analysis of the textile industry, 72% of respondents procure at least half their cotton from sustainable sources. Prime Cotton’s ability to use primary upstream data, with none of the fuss, has facilitated the formation of a focused, and lasting decarbonisation strategy that have allowed it to deliver on its promises to be more competitive around the world as a sustainable cotton producer.