Kailash Himmitrao Mahalle grows cotton in Shelu, India, about 90 miles east of Mumbai. On one side of his 15-acre farm, which was used to compare methods, the cotton plants are about a foot taller and bear more flowers than the ones on the other side. The lusher field has a drip irrigation system — a tangle of plastic veins that direct water to each plant’s root system — that was installed with advice from the Better Cotton Initiative.

Mr. Mahalle said the drip system spreads water and fertilizer more evenly than traditional pumping, and because it puts water only where it is needed, it also results in fewer weeds.

Power failures, commonplace in India, are less worrisome now because drip irrigation does not require electricity over an extended period of time, as traditional irrigating methods do. “This takes three hours; that takes three days,” Mr. Mahalle said, and his water use is down by about 70 percent.

The resulting crop from the new methods of farming is now referred to by Levi Strauss and the initiative as “better cotton.” Levi Strauss’s top management says that about 5 percent of the cotton used in the two million pairs of jeans the company shipped to stores this fall was grown with the sustainable method. The company wants that number to rise to 20 percent by 2015.

Ikea, the furniture chain, hopes to be using “better cotton” exclusively by 2015. The footwear maker Adidas has said it will do the same by 2018.

To reach its 20 percent goal, Levi Strauss says it must radically change how it does business, engaging more directly with contractors as well as farmers. There was a time when American corporations preferred not to know what was going on in foreign factories — to afford them maximum deniability in the event that poor labor or environmental practices were discovered.

Levi Strauss, which reported $4.4 billion in net revenue last year, would not reveal how much it is spending on water sustainability efforts, beyond saying that the company and its foundation have given a combined $600,000 to the Better Cotton Initiative since 2009.