AbTF completes multimillion African project
-Press release provided by Aid by Trade Foundation
Hamburg, Germany – 15 May, 2025 – Healthy soils, responsible water use, and biodiversity conservation are central to the efforts of the Aid by Trade Foundation (AbTF) to make African cotton production more resilient to climate change. AbTF has opened new doors for small-scale farming families in Africa through a EUR 2.8 million project for climate-resilient cotton cultivation. Over the last three years, more than 100,000 farmers in Africa were involved in testing various soil improvement measures, with encouraging results: yields on demonstration sites increased significantly, despite the effects of climate change.
The CAR-iSMa project (in full: “Climate Adaptation and Resilience – A Pan-African Learning & Knowledge Exchange Project on Improved Soil Management”) ends with impressive outcomes. In Côte d’Ivoire, the project’s demonstration fields achieved crop yields of up to 37 percent higher than fields without soil optimisation measures. In addition, following a poor 2022/2023 harvest due to pest damage, the participating Ivorian farmers recorded an average increase in yield from 272 to 1,007 kilograms per hectare in the 2023/2024 season, which resulted in an average increase in income of EUR 509.
“It speaks for itself that far more than our target number of 100,000 small-scale farmers chose to be trained in the theory and practice of regenerative and climate-resilient agriculture,” says Tina Stridde, the managing director of the Aid by Trade Foundation, adding, “In this project, we worked together with scientists, agricultural experts, and small-scale farmers to bring compost and biochar to the fields and to assess the feasibility of applying carbon credits to small-scale cotton production. We investigated new ways to secure good prospects of a stable income for small-scale farmers and their families, even in times of climate change.”
Climate-Resilient Agriculture: Creating Opportunities Through Compost, Biochar, and Carbon Credits
In the course of the project, AbTF focussed on practical measures for improving soil quality, responsible water use, and biodiversity conservation as a basis for greater resilience in small-scale agriculture. “For us, this project reinforced a more resilient way of working with farmers. We are now integrating many of these techniques into our core operations and exploring the potential for carbon farming initiatives, using the tested regenerative soil practices as a strong foundation,” explains Ivans Trigo Popinsky, Director of Production at SAN-JFS, a cotton company from Mozambique involved in the CAR-iSMa project.
In addition, feasibility studies on carbon sequestration were conducted to assess the potential of different soil improvement methods. In the long term, these findings could open up new sources of income through carbon credits in small-scale cotton cultivation.
Getting Results: Regenerating Soil, Preserving Biodiversity, Empowering Women
Over the span of three years, international and interorganisational meetings were held with local farmers and partners to test and share knowledge on the production and effects of compost, biochar, and bokashi as well as erosion control techniques and soil cultivation methods. Project activities also addressed strategic crop rotation, crop diversification, cover crops, tree planting, and integrated production and pest management (IPPM). In parallel, innovative training materials were developed to ensure that awareness-raising efforts can continue long after the project’s end. Finally, it is especially gratifying to see women in all project regions now serving as role models, spreading the project’s innovative ideas, and becoming involved in compost production, which provides a new source of income in many cases.
Having been launched as an initiative of the Aid by Trade Foundation, CAR-iSMa was funded by BMZ (the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development) in collaboration with GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) as part of its Sub-Saharan Cotton Initiative. The project was implemented together with the agricultural group LDC Suisse and over the complete project duration with locally operating cotton companies in Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia and Mozambique.
About the Aid by Trade Foundation
Founded by the entrepreneur Prof. Dr Michael Otto in 2005, the Aid by Trade Foundation (AbTF) is an internationally renowned non-profit organisation that works throughout the world to promote sustainable raw materials. Its activities make a decisive and measurable contribution to improving the living conditions of people and animals while protecting the environment. AbTF takes a practical approach by creating and maintaining a variety of standards to verify raw materials: Cotton made in Africa® (CmiA), Cotton made in Africa Organic (CmiA Organic), Regenerative Cotton Standard® (RCS), and The Good Cashmere Standard® (GCS). A global alliance of textile companies and brands purchases the verified raw materials, paying a licensing fee to AbTF’s marketing company, ATAKORA Fördergesellschaft GmbH. The payment of this fee entitles partners to sell their goods under the standards’ labels. As the challenges facing textile companies and small-scale farmers grow, the standards have a major role to play in ensuring their resilience and future viability. AbTF collaborates closely with industry experts and with specialists in animal and nature protection. Learn more at: www.aidbytrade.org
