Cotton Monitoring Project Takes AI Approach to Enact Change
As many global companies continue to search for ways to be more sustainable when it comes to the apparel and textile industry, some are turning to new ways of thinking. Recently, the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), European Space Agency (ESA), and AI-company Marple launched a new demonstrator project with the intent of showing the potential for remote satellite monitoring of organic cotton cultivation systems.
According to an article shared by Fibre2Fashion, the project is set to be carried out under ESA’s Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) program. That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in.
The BASS program will train AI to use ESA satellite data to detect cotton fields across India and automatically classify them according to their cultivation standard. By integrating standardized yield metrics, this approach will also enable GOTS to generate estimates of organic cotton yields in specific areas, the article reports.
The project will be integrated with existing GOTS measures. “It is an honor and very exciting to be a partner in this ESA demonstration project, and it is living up to our claim to be pioneers serving the sustainable textile sector to enable continuous improvement,” said Claudia Kersten, managing director of GOTS, in the Fibre2Fashion article. “Technologies like this will be a game changer regarding the integrity and promotion opportunities of organic cotton.”
There are some big expectations for the project, with its impact predicted to extend well beyond identifying certified organic cotton fields. It’s expected to also empower GOTS to recognize cotton fields that have not yet obtained organic certification but possess the potential for a seamless transition to organic cultivation because of their farming practices. Doing so would enable GOTS to bring a greater number of farmers — particularly smaller farms — into the certified organic sector and supply chains, the article states.
The project is set to run across the distinct cotton growing regions in India. First results are expected by the end of 2023.
