Soft, Renewable, and Climate Beneficial™: Why U.S. Wool Deserves a Comeback

By Rachel Witte

For decades, American wool has been overlooked in the world of performance textiles— reliable, renewable, and respected by those who know it, yet largely sidelined in an era of fast fashion and synthetic dominance. But that story is starting to shift. Thanks to a new generation of producers, processors, and designers committed to regional supply chains and regenerative farming, U.S.-grown wool is poised for a long-overdue comeback.

Climate Beneficial™ Verified (CBV) wool is at the center of this movement. Designed to improve soil health, reduce carbon emissions, and generate critical revenue for farms and ranches, the CBV program represents more than a fiber—it creates verified ecological, social, and economic outcomes through specific land stewardship practices. CBV builds these systems by facilitating buyer-producer relationships, providing direct marketing channels, and connecting producers to brands seeking traceable, verified wool, all of which helps secure much-needed, stable revenue for farms and ranches.

Wool's Hidden Value: Performance, Traceability, and Place

One reason wool has struggled in today’s market is perception. Many consumers still associate it with the coarse, itchy military blankets of decades past.

“People walk into our store, see the price of a wool sweater, and they’re like, ‘Really?’” said Ben Hostetler, operations manager at Mountain Meadow Wool. “Then they take a tour, feel the fiber, and they get it. They say, ‘I tried this wool sweater and I’m never going back.’”

Part of the appeal lies in wool’s natural breathability, odor resistance, and durability. But Climate Beneficial™ wool offers something even more valuable: transparency. CBV wool is traceable from ranch to garment, so consumers and brands know exactly where it came from, how it was produced, and the environmental impact of its journey.

That transparency is also a selling point for mills and designers. “By having direct relationships with producers and that kind of back-to-farm transparency… it’s not just a nameless, faceless commodity,” explained Siena Shepard, director of the Climate Beneficial™ Vertification Program at Fibershed.

Mountain Meadow Wool Mill

The Supply Chain Bottleneck—and the Case for Investment

Still, challenges remain. America’s textile infrastructure is a shadow of what it once was, and small mills are closing faster than they’re opening.

This decline didn’t happen overnight. Over the last century, globalization, consolidation, and the rise of synthetic fibers have dramatically reshaped the U.S. textile industry. Trade policies in the late 20th century incentivized overseas manufacturing, while petroleum-based synthetics offered cheaper and more scalable alternatives to wool. As demand fell and domestic processing became more fragmented, wool production in the U.S. shrank, and with it, the capacity to clean, spin, and finish fiber locally.

“The #1 barrier to rebuilding a resilient wool supply in the U.S. is lack of spinners,” said Stacie. “Shipping to multiple facilities raises costs and delays production.”

Ben at Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo, Wyoming, agrees with Stacie. Mountain Meadow Wool was founded in 2007 as a regional mill offering scouring, carding, spinning, and knitting services, making it one of the few vertically integrated mills in the United States. “We’re constantly adapting. Most of the small mills last 5-10 years and then shut down,” he said. “We need more support to keep regional processing alive.”

Fibershed, through CBV and its many partnerships with initiatives like the Fibers Fund and extension services, is addressing this challenge by building the financial, educational, and supply chain systems that enable producers to adopt and sustain ecologically beneficial practices. Through its partnership with technical assistance providers and mill collaborators, CBV helps identify infrastructure gaps and strategize solutions. The CBV team facilitates connections between growers and regional processors, shares best practices for efficient production scaling, and supports collaborative investment models. In some cases, this includes delivering grant funding from state and federal programs to cover practice implementation costs, making introductions to like-minded brands, or coordinating across multiple stakeholders to build out capacity for scouring, spinning, or blending wool at scale.

The Regenerative Potential of Wool

Wool is often called “renewable,” and for good reason: sheep regrow their fleece every year, and when minimally processed, wool is fully biodegradable. But Climate Beneficial™ wool takes that concept further. This is wool produced on ranches that actively sequester carbon, rebuild soil, and enhance ecosystem resilience.

“What we’re really trying to do is create a system that doesn’t need synthetic inputs because it’s functionally healthy without them,” said Laura Sansone, founder of the New York Textile Lab. “We’re not just taking out the bad—we’re adding back the good.”

The term “regenerative” has gained traction across agriculture and fashion, but without a standard definition, it’s often overused—or misused—as a vague sustainability claim. That makes verified, outcomes-based programs like Climate Beneficial™ all the more essential, especially when its structure is designed to create an agricultural system that produces measurable benefits that can be quantified 

CBV participating ranchers use practices like adaptive managed grazing, prescriptive grazing, compost application, hedgerow planting, and riparian restoration. These aren’t add-ons; they’re central to the program’s framework. When managed correctly, sheep help cycle nutrients through manure deposition and stimulate plant regrowth, which can improve ground cover, reduce erosion, and foster microbial life in the soil. 

While all grazing lands naturally cycle carbon through photosynthesis and organic matter decomposition, Climate Beneficial™ practices are designed to accelerate and optimize carbon drawdown, moving beyond baseline sequestration to increase the amount of atmospheric carbon stored in soil over time. 

As Laura explained, "I love the Climate Beneficial™ verification because it’s modeled after the carbon cycle, which is like the ultimate in reciprocity on the planet—where things are released and they go back into the ground."

Samples from NY Textile Lab

To support this transition, CBV participating ranchers receive technical assistance from trained experts who act as long-term partners throughout the regenerative process. These technical assistance providers help growers design carbon farm plans tailored to their landscape, implement NRCS-approved practices, and track key outcome data through annual site visits and record audits. This hands-on, relationship-based support is what makes the Climate Beneficial™ model more than a checklist. It’s a system of stewardship.

The program has resulted in 82,500+ tonnes of CO2e sequestered across over 180,000 acres since 2016. This work doesn’t replace natural carbon cycling—it builds on it, adding layers of intentional land management to increase the rate and amount of carbon draw down from the atmosphere. This is not only about climate mitigation, but about long-term soil health and resilience to drought, flood, and other stressors.

Biodiversity and the Return of Breed Diversity

Beyond carbon and chemistry, CBV wool supports biodiversity, both above and below ground. CBV practices include establishing perennial hedgerows, pollinator strips, windbreaks, and multi-species cover crops, which are designed to increase habitat complexity and biodiversity across working rangelands. But there’s also a growing appreciation for biodiversity within the fiber itself.

“There’s this opportunity to embrace material diversity,” said Laura. “It’s something we’ve lost in industrial clothing systems.”

American producers work with a wide range of breeds—Rambouillet, Merino, Targhee, and more. Each has distinct properties that influence elasticity, durability, warmth, and feel. At Mountain Meadow Wool, Ben has seen firsthand how these breed differences affect product outcomes.

“A size medium in a Rambouillet sweater is a size large in a Merino,” said Ben. “Same yarn specs. It’s just the elasticity and spring back in the fiber.”

This kind of nuance matters, especially for designers seeking performance-based or regionally expressive textiles. It also builds value back into the source—the ranchers who steward the land and the animals.

Birds and Rambouillet sheep at McCormack Ranch in CA

Building a Regenerative Culture

“We’re not just trying to scale regenerative fiber,” said Laura. “We’re trying to build regional trust networks—where people know where their textiles come from, and they know the people behind them.”

It’s a vision that extends from the land to the loom. As Stacie noted, “I have brands come to me because of CBV, but they stay because of the relationships we create—with the land, the ranchers, and the story.”

The comeback of American wool isn’t just about fiber. It’s about values: restoration over extraction, relationships over transactions, and stewardship over scale. And in that sense, it’s not a comeback at all. It’s a return to what fiber has always been.