Kudos to the Plains Cotton Cooperative Association in Lubbock, Tex., for launching a new company that is selling eco-friendly denim jeans from cotton grown using the efficiencies of precision farming.

The company Denimatrix will produce jeans in Guatemala made from cotton produced by 25,000 grower-members of American Cotton Growers (ACG) who are focused on developing quality fabric using sustainable practices. To buy them, visit www.SAFEDenim.com.

American Cotton Growers-or ACG-and its farmer-owners are focused on developing high quality denim fabrics for our customers with minimal impact on the environment. We produce an average of 37 million yards of denim annually, enough to make 26 million pairs of jeans, every yard of which is grown, spun, dyed, and woven from the cotton our members produce. This denim process is a true, homespun phenomenon – American cotton literally created from field to fabric.

ACG meets or exceeds all regulations administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. In all possible processes throughout the mill, we use the best available technology to apply the principles of reduce, re-use and recycle and to avoid production of hazardous waste.

Our stewardship carries all the way from the field to the fabric. We like to call it SAFE denim-Sustainable, American and Friendly to the Environment. For us, it’s not just a fad; it’s a multi-generational commitment to ensure our children and grandchildren can farm the land.

We’re protecting our ecosystems for these future generations by remaining good stewards of the land, air and water. We value doing the right thing, in the right place, in the right way, at the right time, and it requires the use of new technologies.

We continually embrace new technologies in irrigation to reduce the volume of water used to grow our cotton. Compared to 25 years ago, our farmers now use 45 percent less water to grow cotton.

Technologies like Integrated Pest Management systems use beneficial insects to control pests and reduce human and environmental exposure to chemicals while lowering input costs. Today, the number of pesticide applications required to produce cotton is half of what it was just 20 years ago.

Advances in seed breeding and farming practices have greatly reduced the amount of chemical inputs required to grow cotton, resulting in substantial environmental benefits.

Precision agriculture uses aerial and satellite infrared photography to identify problem spots in our fields and apply inputs only where they are needed via global positioning systems.

These technologies have dramatically reduced the land area required to produce enough cotton to meet world demand. In 1926, U.S. farmers planted more than 44 million acres and produced almost 18 million bales. By 2004, U.S. cotton acreage totaled just under 14 million acres which produced more than 23 million bales. In other words, an additional 30 million acres are available for food production, conservation and wildlife habitat.

ACG and its 25,000 farmer-owners are committed to continually improving our denim manufacturing processes and farming practices. Sustainable agriculture is the ability of a farm to produce food and fiber indefinitely with minimal impact on the environment.

We don’t need to be told to take care of the land for our children and grandchildren because we learned that from our own parents and grandparents. It is our generational commitment to Sustainable, American and Friendly to the Environment.