Better Cotton‘s Pakistan office has partnered with the Punjab government’s Punjab Urban Land Systems Enhancement (PULSE) initiative to improve textile transparency with verifiable cotton farming data.

Created to demarcate and map urban and rural land using advanced geospatial technologies, PULSE will make that capability available to Better Cotton to validate farm-level data and reduce the cost of manual data creation and validation.

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Many of Pakistan’s cotton farmers are smallholders with farms less than two hectares (just under five acres) of land. For operations this small, data collection can be a challenge without the help of digital tools.

“PULSE has had great success in modernizing field boundaries demarcation across Punjab,” said Hina Fouzia, director of Better Cotton Pakistan. “For us, it presents a great opportunity both to streamline data collection and ensure it mirrors the results validated by the province’s government.”

The data collected through PULSE’s tools will make it easier for Better Cotton to verify that farms meet the criteria for its Assurance Program in Pakistan. Through the program, farms and farm groups must adhere to the organization’s rules for certification, including sustainability performance and improvements and identifying opportunities for improving production processes.

Last year, the organization launched a traceability solution for the fashion and textile sectors which allows brands such as H&M Group, Walmart, Target and Gap, Inc.—who all have partnered with Better Cotton—to accurately trace and disclose the origin of raw materials. This new partnership with PULSE will allow farmers in Pakistan to demonstrate compliance with the criteria for the Traceable Better Cotton program.

“This partnership will add a new layer of credibility to Better Cotton’s footprint and outreach data,” said Muhammad Qadeer, field digitalization manager for Better Cotton. “The validation of seasonal area under cotton through satellites and machine-learning models will enhance transparency, data traceability and trust in the supply chain.”

This new partnership comes less than a month after Better Cotton announced it signed a memorandum of understanding with German investment firm FS Impact Financce to promote gender equality and climate resilience among smallholder cotton farmers in India. The program aims to reach one million women in India’s cotton industry by promoting equality in decision-making on farms, improving sustainability and improving the livelihoods of workers.