The country is losing 10-15 percent of intrinsic value of cotton due to low and contaminated quality of the crop, this was informed at a meeting regarding production of clean cotton held at Karachi under the chairmanship of Sindh Agriculture Secretary Mahkum Din Qadri.
The meeting was further informed that losses due to cotton with low quality and with contamination of non-lint foreign material is estimated up to two billion dollars, which calls on serious role on behalf of growers and ginners in respect of clean picking, proper handling and quality ginning.
The government has launched a programme of clean cotton in 20 ginning factories of the country, out of these, six ginning factories have been selected in three districts of Sindh, these factories are; SLD cotton Ginning Factory and Pehloo Mal Ginning Factory of Mirpurkhas Dada Ginning Factory of Naushahro Feroze district Sindh, will produce 30,000 bales of clean cotton this year on which growers will be paid Rs 50 per maund premium. Joint teams of TCP Agriculture Extension Department and Pakistan Cotton Standard Institute have been posted at the selected factories and the work has been started.
It was decided that through join efforts the role of middlemen should be eliminated in provision of cotton seed to ginning factories and growers should be encouraged to directly supply quality cotton to ginners to get the maximum returns.
The meeting was informed that there was a great scope of production of clean cotton as many growers have been successful in reducing the contamination level down of 0.74 to 1.97 grams per bale from 19 grams.
The Secretary Agriculture called upon the growers and ginners to jointly make efforts to improve the quality of cotton so that country and all other stakeholders get maximum benefits. Among other meeting was attended by representatives of Trading Corporation of Pakistan, Cotton Standard Institute Agriculture Extension department and cotton ginners.
Comments
Comments are closed.