The EMS Pathways Project “Enhancing the cotton industry’s BMP program (ems pathway) to improve adoption” (the Project) has allowed the cotton industry to investigate whether and how the combination of the industry’s already established environmental management programme (‘BMP’) and the increasing attention being paid to the environmental characteristics and performance of agricultural production systems could be utilised to provide advantages to the Australian cotton industry — such as increased adoption of sustainable and profitable farming practices, increased awareness of the environmental credentials of Australian cotton and increased market value.

The Project sought to extend the BMP concept both in scope — to fibre quality as well as

environment — and in extent, from the cotton grower to all sectors of the domestic cotton supply chain. The reasoning behind this extension was that it would allow the industry to better support a branded product that could be used to differentiate Australian cotton.

The activities undertaken by the Project fell into 4 distinct categories:

1. Investigating the market’s requirements — especially retailers’, vis-à-vis desired

and required ‘sustainability’ attributes to determine whether the existing BMP Program could meet those requirements (or needed adjusting) and then endeavouring to have Australian BMP cotton made into garments and thereby trial ‘whole of chain’ BMP so as to understand both the limitations to and potential of such an approach to add value to the adoption of good natural resource management practices

2. Developing fibre quality best management practices for each of the major sectors of the domestic cotton supply chain, in collaboration with the industry association and commercial interests participating in each of those sectors

3. Investigating the requirements and options for demonstrating stewardship, domestically and especially internationally, through developing the framework for a branded product1, and through collaborating with relevant international organisations and initiatives focussed on or addressing sustainability issues in cotton production

4. Maintaining an on-going involvement in core industry BMP activities, and in particular reviewing the domestic approach to better natural resource management as implemented by the catchment planning process and relevant legislation, both state and federal.

These 4 main areas of activity fall into 2 quite distinct and different points of focus for the Project and this report: the first 3 areas were generally directed to investigating and testing the potential for market pull-through to provide an incentive for the on-farm adoption of better natural resource management practices, while the second focal point was the existing milieu of natural resource management in Australia: the institutions, legislation, policies and current thinking regarding how best to build a pathway to sustainable farming systems.