Deep in the center of Sri Lanka’s agricultural heartland lies Monaragala, which in early April, is simmering under unseasonable heat and humidity. A five-hour drive from the capital of Colombo, it’s home to a unique initiative: reintroducing near-forgotten ancient cotton farming practices to the region, with a modern regenerative twist.

Launched in 2025 by UK recycling and waste management firm Mygroup and run on the ground by Fibershed Sri Lanka, the Exiled project is capturing the interest of local farmers increasingly disenfranchised by the debt trap and a reliance on agrochemicals necessary to produce the region’s common crops: rice, maize, and millet. Fluctuating prices and costly fertilizers mean many farmers are trapped in a debt cycle with banks, relying on loans to survive and barely making a profit. To break out of this system, Fibershed Sri Lanka is helping farmers to convert their farmland to regenerative cotton, with a focus on fair prices paid through a cooperative enterprise — a model that existed before Sri Lanka industrialized its economy in the 1970s.

The program is still in its infancy, but is already demonstrating the potential for raw material supply chains to deliver both social and environmental impact. Mygroup, which specializes in hard to recycle materials like textiles, began leasing a disused acre of farmland in February 2025 after its director, Steve Carrie, met Fibershed Sri Lanka country lead Thilina Premjayanth while on holiday the year prior. The pilot crop, which was produced by fusing regenerative farming techniques with ancient Chena cultivation practices, yielded 280 kilograms of cotton. It is now being woven into textiles at a handloom center in Kurunegala, northwest Sri Lanka, and bought by Mygroup’s ReFactory arm for its new brand — called Exiled, after the project — launching this week.

“Even if we hadn’t been able to get a crop of cotton, it was always going to be a success, because we left the soil in such better condition than we found it,” says Rebecca O’Leary, textiles manager at Mygroup. This year, Fibershed Sri Lanka has recruited 20 local farmers to expand the regenerative cotton program across 25 acres, and in 2027, it plans to reach 100 acres with 50 farmers. They’ve developed a cooperative, the Cotton Farmers’ Cooperative Society, to support participating farmers, training them on regenerative practices, providing interest-free loans to buy seeds and compost ingredients, and building a fund for sick pay and emergencies.

Soon, on-farm ginning and spinning hubs built from shipping containers will be operational, allowing farming families to process their own harvests, too. The cotton yarns will then be naturally dyed and woven into cloth locally, before being sent off to ReFactory’s Hull site in the UK for production into Exiled garments.

The ambition is to reinvigorate Sri Lanka’s capacity for small-scale cotton production, an industry that once thrived in this warm and humid climate. By swapping high-impact and low-paying crops like maize and millet for regenerative cotton, participating farmers and their communities are reclaiming a supply chain, with both financial and wellbeing benefits baked in.

Supporting local farmers

Premawathi, a farmer from Kahambana in Monaragala, has been farming 10 acres of maize, peanuts, coconuts, and mangoes for close to 30 years. This month, she will dedicate one of those acres to regenerative cotton seeds provided by Fibershed Sri Lanka in an experiment she hopes will provide a more reliable income and reduce her reliance on fertilizers. “I’m starting with one acre, because I can manage it — I can see the income and the costs,” she says. “Then, I want to take this technology and use it on my other crops.”

Once harvested, the cotton is bought back at a set price of LKR 1,400 ($4.40) per kilogram, which is a significant increase on the market price of maize and other crops. “Normally, they sell maize at LKR 150 ($0.47) per kilogram,” explains Premjayanth. “The biggest problem is that with this income, they need to buy urea and other chemical fertilizers. The farmers also need to spend an enormous amount of money on fencing, because elephants and wild boar want to eat the maize.”

Farmers are left with little profit, exacerbated by the unreliable market price for conventional crops. “The long-term crisis for us is the price we get for these crops,” says Pushpakumara, a farmer from Okkampitiya. “Regardless of whether it’s regenerative or conventional, our main focus is price.”

It’s a reality that all farmers in the area face, with some entering the regenerative cotton program with a degree of trepidation. “What I’m worried about is how I’ll be supported, the buy-back agreement, whether we’ll get good money and be paid on time,” says Thilakarathne, also from Kahambana, who has planted a small patch of cotton seeds around his house to observe their growth before committing more land to the program. Part of the support offered by Fibershed Sri Lanka includes financial literacy training, representation for farmers at banks, and signing guarantees for loans.

A universal concern for the farmers we meet is one that Fibershed Sri Lanka has little control over: the increasingly unpredictable weather patterns caused by global warming. In early April when we visit the farmers, they’re all waiting for the first rainfall of the season to hydrate the soil so they can plant the seeds, after which they can use on-site reserves to continue watering the crops. It’s a race against the clock to grow and harvest the crops in the intervening months before the next rainy season hits. “I’m upset with the weather,” says Thilakarathne. “We expected a rainfall in March, but I’m worried it’s becoming too late. How will the cotton survive? If the cotton takes six months to harvest, the rain is getting very late. How will the harvest happen?”

Reintroducing regenerative agriculture

While garment manufacturing is one of Sri Lanka’s biggest export sectors, the country doesn’t produce raw material on an industrial scale. But it wasn’t always the case. Before the late 1970s, when Sri Lanka transitioned into an industrialized export-oriented economy, there was a thriving ecosystem with an estimated 60,000 acres of cotton farms, along with handloom centers in almost all villages where cotton was processed and sold through government-run cooperatives. Wild cotton plants still grow sporadically throughout the different regions, but Fibershed Sri Lanka recently secured the country’s only import license for cotton seeds, regenerative or otherwise, which are bought from India.

“We are trying to bring back a crop that was lost in the good old days, and the farming systems that were rejected with the conventional system, and the price points, which are not feasible in the conventional system,” says Premjayanth.

Before the 1970s, farmers had little access to chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and would practice Chena cultivation — regenerative agriculture techniques that are interconnected with Buddhist rituals and ethics. Farmers would employ back-burning and rotational farming, use fences, scarecrows and bells to protect crops from larger animals, and spread neem oil or ash onto plants to prevent pests. These practices were largely lost to conventional farming methods over the decades.

Reviving this ancient wisdom is a challenge that requires an incentive, which is why the harvest is bought at such a competitive price. “The farmers with this knowledge are not farming anymore, they’re very old now, so probably their sons or grandsons are the farmers,” says Premjayanth. “It’s easy to go to the chemical shop, take a spray, and use it. Instead, you have to go to the forest, identify different leaves, bring them back, and create concoctions — that’s difficult. So that knowledge is there, but it needs a great push.”

As part of the program, Premjayanth and his team of on-site officers are teaching farmers to create compost ferments from ingredients like cow manure, chickpea flour, and sugar to increase soil nutrition, as well as sprays made from chilli, ginger, pepper, and garlic to prevent pests. The pilot acre of land is in the process of becoming certified regenerative by Control Union and Better Cotton, which will be rolled out to other farms in due course.

Pushpakumara from Okkampitiya is 67, and has been farming maize, green gram (mung bean), and sugarcane on his land for 50 years. He has witnessed firsthand the shift from traditional techniques to conventional. “I want to return to the old practices, because I know how it used to be done in Sri Lanka,” he says. Premjayanth says he’ll ask Pushmakumara to speak to other farmers about his experience.

While stable prices are the biggest drawcard for the farmers, there’s also an increasing awareness of the health impacts associated with agrochemicals, which have been linked to rising cases of chronic kidney disease in Sri Lanka, particularly in agricultural zones. “When we use chemicals on the farm, it makes me uneasy in my body,” says Pushpakumara. “If there is a technique we can use to avoid chemicals, I’m interested in how that can help me stay healthy and keep the soil productive, too.”

The program is unlikely to produce enough cotton to support the country’s major manufacturers, but it is an interesting case study on how to reinvigorate a once flourishing ecosystem run by and for local communities. It is part of a growing cohort of hyperlocal supply chain projects for lower-impact fibers that benefit farming communities on a number of levels. A similar regenerative cotton initiative can be found in Apulia, Italy, launched in 2023 and backed by Armani, while Fibershed has rolled out cotton programs in Puerto Rico, Tamil Nadu in India, and in the southern United States.

As the Sri Lanka program evolves, Mygroup intends to sell the surplus cotton, which has not been used in Exiled garments, at wholesale to brands in its network, embracing the rising interest in regenerative cotton. But O’Leary says this project is a fundamentally philanthropic one with the core intention to improve the lives of farming communities in Monaragala who have been, for want of a better word, ‘exiled’ from the supply chain. “It’s fair to say that the reason this project has been as successful as it has, is absolutely down to the local farmers,” says O’Leary. “They’ve brought so much knowledge to the project and have been really generous with that. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”