Monitoring organic cotton from space
Our host Philip Berman sits down with Claudia Kersten, managing director of the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) to discuss a cotton monitoring project which is literally out of this world. GOTS is working alongside the European Space Agency (ESA) and artificial intelligence specialist Marple to monitor Indian organic cotton crops from space – using AI and satellite imagery to verify farming techniques and identify fraud. The participants discuss how using satellite imagery and AI can distinguish between organic cotton fields from conventional ones. The project, funded by the ESA involved visiting 6,000 fields in India to collect 'ground truth' data, which was used to train an algorithm to identify organic cotton fields. The current accuracy is 80%, with plans to improve it. The initiative aims to increase organic cotton production and integrity, benefiting both farmers and consumers. Future steps include expanding to other regions, and refining the technology for higher accuracy. This accuracy is expected to improve through ongoing refinement and validation processes, involving more visual inspections and cross-checking with existing data. GOTS says that the next steps will involve connecting the market and supporting organic conversion projects.