The Istanbul meeting made a clear point for brands and suppliers: organic cotton cannot scale reliably if farmers carry most of the cost, transition risk and market uncertainty.
The Organic Cotton Summit has concluded in Istanbul with a call for stronger investment, deeper collaboration and more balanced risk-sharing across the organic cotton value chain. Co-hosted by the Organic Cotton Accelerator and Textile Exchange, the June 2–4 event brought together close to 270 participants from 24 countries, including farmers, producer organisations, suppliers, brands, retailers, civil-society groups, public-sector representatives, innovators and finance stakeholders.
Farmers move to the centre
The summit’s central message was that organic cotton must be built around producing communities, not imposed on them from brand offices or compliance departments. Discussions focused on the need to keep farmers involved in decision-making as the sector expands, especially as climate risk, input costs, certification demands and sourcing expectations become more complex.
Bart Vollaard, executive director of OCA, said long-term resilience depends on distributing responsibility, value and risk more fairly across the supply chain. Ashley Gill, chief standards and strategy officer at Textile Exchange, similarly stressed trust, collaboration, long-term commitment and shared responsibility as conditions for scaling organic cotton’s impact.
Compliance becomes a sourcing issue
The programme covered investment in farming communities, data for climate and nature outcomes, traceability, transparency, evolving policy requirements and due-diligence expectations. For brands and manufacturers, this signals a practical shift: organic cotton sourcing is moving from a fibre-preference decision to a governance, data and resilience strategy.
The summit also featured OCA’s Organic Cotton Pavilion, highlighting organisations involved in production, certification, traceability and innovation. This matters because credible organic cotton growth will depend on systems that can verify origin, support farmer economics and satisfy buyer scrutiny without creating unmanageable administrative burdens at farm level.
Türkiye adds field reality
Following the conference, delegates were invited to visit the organic cotton-growing region of Aydın, hosted by OCA’s local partner Akasya. The visit included farms during the growing season and a local ginning facility, connecting conference discussions with the operational realities of production.
The next test is whether the sector converts summit consensus into procurement models that reward farmers, finance transition costs, improve traceability and give mills and brands a more reliable organic cotton supply base.
