The Better Cotton initiative has launched a new farm-level project in Pakistan to digitalise field data collection in the country’s cotton-growing sector. The launch of the project is in response to an increasing demand from consumers, legislators and the downstream cotton industry for greater transparency in the origins and route to market of cotton.
This requirement, says Better Cotton, calls for more sophisticated technological solutions and processes to be introduced at the farm level to create an efficient, timely and credible data life cycle. In order to improve data collection at the farm level, Better Cotton Pakistan has therefore set up an initial project with 40 smallholder producer units that will streamline their transition to digital methods of data collection. This includes supplying programme partners with standardised data collection tools, software licences and training for field staff.
Muhammad Qadeer ul Hussnain, Digital Agriculture Manager at Better Cotton explained: “This strategic move towards digitalisation reflects Better Cotton’s commitment to enhancing programme partners’ efficiency, improving data quality, ensuring data traceability, elevating analytics capacity, and strengthening data governance within the country team and programme partners, setting a positive precedent for the future of cotton in the region.”
Having standardised data collection tools related to farmer identification and participation, the first phase of the project will see almost 40% of Better Cotton producer units in Pakistan adopt tech-driven methods for collecting farmer data.
This is expected to pave the way for the digital recording of capacity-strengthening data, and ultimately facilitate the adoption of more sustainable farming practices. In the next phase, the remaining producer units in the country will be upgraded, resulting in all field data being handled digitally throughout its life cycle.
This digitalisation rollout plan follows the launch of previous pilot schemes carried out by Better Cotton including a farmer data digitalisation pilot in India, a project to digitalise farmer field books in Mozambique, and a first mile traceability pilot in Pakistan.
