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October, 2026…
The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) has officially announced the acquisition of Co:Farm, an AI-powered technology platform developed by Materra, in a move to accelerate the scaling of regenerative agriculture across the world’s largest cotton sustainability programme.
The announcement was made by BCI Chief Executive Officer, Nick Weatherill, at a launch reception in Vancouver, Canada, to mark the organisation’s evolution into a regenerative standard system.
With the acquisition, BCI will rapidly scale Co:Farm from the 10,000 farmers Materra has engaged to more than 1.3 million farmers aligned with BCI’s standard. In turn, the platform will equip BCI’s global membership of brands and retailers with new levels of impact data to inform their sourcing decisions.
Weatherill said: ″Co:Farm will manage BCI’s field intelligence, enabling efficient digital data collection at farm level and delivering high-quality validated impact data, actionable insights, greater integrity controls and feedback loops to drive continuous improvement. By bringing tried-and-tested field technologies and specialised tech expertise in-house, BCI will strengthen its digital capabilities, easing the administrative burden on farmers and making it simpler for retailers to source BCI cotton backed by credible impact data.″
Co:Farm is a digital solution designed to help scale regenerative agriculture. Through AI-driven guidance and tutorials, it helps farmers optimise their work, streamline data collection, and accelerate their adoption of regenerative practices.
For field-level organisations, it improves transparency by collating digital farmer profiles across regions and creating dashboards with comparable, historical datasets that help chronicle progress over time and identify areas for targeted improvements.
Ed Brial, CEO at Materra, commented: ″Materra’s vision was always to support farmers and supply chains to work together for a truly regenerative transition, one which supports farmers and meets them where they are in the context without ignoring the need for massive scale through consumer retail.”
″Having demonstrated the potential for impact with 10,000 farmers through our award-winning sourcing programme, BCI is the ideal partner to scale our model for maximum impact in the cotton space (around 25 percent of the world market). “
″On a personal level it brings immense pride having worked directly with our pioneering 21 farmers in our first year, who took a chance on our programme to now see this work really take hold at scale.″
BCI will implement Co:Farm for the 2027-28 cotton season and will share its roadmap for the platform at its conference in Marrakech, Morocco, from 25-27 January…
Source: Agropages.com
