Ron Burleson could talk about farming all day. As a boy, the third-generation North Carolina cotton farmer rode his dadΆs tractor and self-propelled combine harvester around the lush, rolling hills of their 1,000-acre farm. Yet as the farm grew and he took over his dadΆs land, Burleson always wondered where the billowy threads of his cotton harvest ended up.

“Someone once told me Levis used my cotton, but I had no clue,” Burleson says. According to the Organic Consumers Association , the US is the worldΆs second largest cotton producer with 60% of the crop shipped overseas.

These days Burleson knows exactly where his cotton ends up – in T-shirts manufactured at TS Designs, a factory 130 miles away in Burlington, North Carolina. The farmer and the factory have been connected by Cotton of the Carolinas , a project aiming to bring textile and apparel industry jobs back to the region.

The project currently employs about 500 workers, says head of business development Sam Moore, in the kinds of textile industry jobs that once drove the regionΆs economy – ginning, spinning, knitting and finishing fabric as well as cutting and sewing garments. They all come with fair pay and safe working conditions – unlike many overseas competitors, Moore notes – while keeping wages and profits within local communities.

Burleson uses a number of environmentally beneficial farming techniques to raise cotton for the project. To avoid irrigation he relies instead upon a six-week intensive rainfall period to bloom his plants. He also uses integrated pest management methods that help keep pesticide spraying to a minimum.

“The whole supply chain produces a product that is carbon sparing, water sparing, local and economically viable,” says Moore, who is also the managing director of Hohenstein Institute America, a textiles testing and research center.

Keeping the different parts of the manufacturing process clustered together geographically makes the project economically competitive with overseas factories despite its higher labor costs and better working conditions, says Harry Moser, president of The Reshoring Institute , a nonprofit seeking to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. “Proximity favorably impacts lead time, freight costs, inventory levels, delivery, travel cost and the ability to innovate.”

Once huge textile industry stutters back to life

After decades of losing jobs to increased automation as well as the economic dynamics of free trade agreements like NAFTA, the textile and apparel manufacturing sectors are making a modest comeback in the South. A 2013 report (PDF) by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that while roughly a third of US textile production remained overseas, companies from several countries, including the UK, India, Israel, Mexico and Switzerland, had announced plans to expand operations across the South – including North Carolina.

Michaela Platzer, the reportΆs author, says that foreign textile manufacturers cited proximity to their customers, lower transportation costs, shorter delivery times and access to cheaper energy sources as the main reasons for opening textile plants in the region.

This year American Giant – a San Francisco-based maker of hoodies, sweatpants and T-shirts – has opened a factory in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 2013 Lucky Brand Jeans launched a “Made in USA” collection while more upscale brands like Theory and Tadashi Shoji began inserting US-made products into their lines. Some other firms such as Texas Jeans and Diamond Gusset tout locally sourced cotton in their US-made lines. But it remains to be seen whether the tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs that have vanished from North Carolina and other states since the 1970s can be restored.

According to TS Designs president Eric Henry, whoΆs had to downscale his factoryΆs jobs almost ninefold during the industryΆs bust period, consumer demand for US-made garments is growing. The firm currently produces 2,000 Cotton of the Carolinas T-shirts weekly (which retail for $25 per shirt) compared to 300 a week only three years ago – an increase of nearly 700%. Henry believes the broader “buy local” trend is helping drive this growth.

“The three Walmarts around Burlington buy little from our community and provide few with a living wage,” Henry says. “We must balance the scales.”

Kevin Gardner, a senior director for global responsibility communications at Walmart, believes the comparison is not valid, since Walmart is a retailer only, not a manufacturer. According to Gardner, Walmart supports over 54,000 supplier jobs in North Carolina.

Revealing the supply chain to customers

In the wake of revelations of worker abuse and deaths in overseas garment factories, there seems to be a growing consumer desire for reassurance that no one suffered in the making of a newly purchased garment. Cotton of the Carolinas is making savvy use of this trend. Ronnie BurlesonΆs smiling face adorns the projectΆs packaging, and each T-shirt is marked with a tracking number or bit of colored thread. Customers who enter this information onto the companyΆs website are rewarded with the face, name, and location of every person who worked to manufacture it.

One small glimpse of how consumers respond to the shirts and their message can be seen at the Weaver Street Market, a co-op in Hillsborough, North Carolina carrying local and regional products. The marketΆs sales of Cotton of the Carolinas shirts have grown from 13% six years ago to 28% in 2013, according to Peg Todloski, the marketΆs specialty merchandiser. She speaks approvingly of the quality of the T-shirts, as well as how accessible everyone is on the local supply chain.

Like any small-scale business venture, Cotton of the Carolinas faces challenges in re-blooming the regionΆs textile industry – such as convincing American consumers to regularly spend $25 on a T-shirt when giant retailers offer dramatically cheaper options. Also, some major players in the global apparel industry – like Nike – are re-assessing their use of cotton for reasons ranging from the cropΆs environmental toll in water and pesticide use to its social impacts. The cotton industry in Uzbekistan for example is facing scrutiny for its continued use of forced child labor in cotton harvesting.

Burleson says his farming practices prove that cottonΆs heavy eco-footprint can be countered, and points to industry research (pdf) suggesting that the crop need not be water-intensive. But nothing can shield cotton farmers from uncooperative weather or the changing climate. Heavy spring rainfall has been known to destroy organic crops grown for Cotton in the Carolinas.

TS DesignsΆs Henry says any struggle is well worth the effort. A few years ago, 90% of the projectΆs business came from only eight or nine companies. These days there are hundreds of regular clients keeping him and his small team busy and hopeful for the future. “Things donΆt make us happy. Our community does,” Henry says. “So the better my community, the happier I am too.”