Agriculture department, cotton growers hold divergent views on crop size, condition

Sindh Agriculture Department held a series of workshops, the last at Cotton Research Institute, Sakrand, following critical appraisal of the performance of Agriculture Department officials of various disciplines and mounting corruption reports in the press.
The speakers at the conference dredged out positive from unproductive analysis to dispel what they called were misperceptions about the failure of Sindh Agriculture Department dealing with the problems of farming community in the province.
The leaders of the farming community who were attending the workshop were critical of Agriculture Department's "ill-conceived policies", performance of research, on-farm water management and Sindh Extension Services.
The growers fuming with rage said that substandard seeds supplied by the private seed companies in the name of Niab-78 had cost the growers heavily while the vagaries of the nature had brought the cotton growers to their knee. They said that cotton crop continuously remained under pest attack and most of the districts were infested with sucking pest, pink and spotted boll worm, shedding of fruity bodies and lesser growth of the plant compared to last year.
They said that spread of two economically pernicious pests--pink and spotted boll worms--was more than last year.
They pointed out that the growers were left to the mercy of private seed companies without evolving a system of checks and balances, and demanded that Sindh Seed Corporation should be revived to ensure supply of quality seed to growers.
Advisor to Sindh Chief Minister for Food and Agriculture Murtaza Khan Jatoi held out the assurance that the government had decided to revive Sindh Seed Corporation, which has now been shifted to Sakrand Cotton Institute, and D G Research has been assigned the task to make it operational.
He said that 3.5 million bales had been fixed as cotton production target against last year's target of three million bales, which had been crossed in Sindh. His claim was contradictory to statistics issued by the Director Crop Maximisation. Another contradictory claim of the advisor was that five varieties of cotton from the Sakrand Research Institute, four varieties from Tandojam institute and another four varieties of cotton from the Nuclear Institute of Agriculture, Tandojam, would be introduced during the current year while the current cropping season would be over within next 45 days.
Later, it was found that both these contradictory claims were figments of imagination of Director Information Agriculture Department who dished out the report to some media folks.
When contacted the growers told Business Recorder that they had rejected the claim of surpassing the set target of cotton production and added that the crop was under flowering, boll forming and picking stages and estimate of size of crop at this stage was not possible. Commenting on the revival of Sindh Seed Corporation within one year, they said it was also impossible as most of the Corporation's seed multiplication farms "are being encroached upon by people".
Referring to activation of field assistants, the growers said that they are too ill-trained, ill-educated and incompetent to help growers in resolving their problems. They said that most of them had been appointed on political considerations and were spending their time in more lucrative activities.
The workshop did not discuss the problems of contaminated cotton, as the Department has failed to implement Cotton Control Act 1994, amended 1999. It has been observed during field visits that seed-cotton (phutti) is being transported to ginneries in jute or polypropylene bags which indicates that there would be no progress in production of contamination-free cotton in the province.
When asked about the outcome of the workshop, the President of Sindh Chamber of Agriculture said there was nothing tangible.