EDITORIAL: In yet another piece of discouraging news for the country’s economy, the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association has announced that cotton production during the current season has dropped by almost half compared to the same period of last year.
According to a report released by the association, 442,000 bales of phutti or raw cotton were made available to ginning factories until July 15, which was 48.48 percent less than the 858,007 bales brought to ginning units during the same period of last year.
While this dismal performance is largely being attributed to the impact of climate change, the fact remains that the sector is blighted by more deep-rooted, underlying issues, which if they aren’t resolved swiftly, will continue to have an adverse impact on an important segment of the economy that contributes significantly to employment, industrial production and exports.
While policies to combat the impact of climate change are much-needed, unless the more entrenched issues are also resolved, the yield of cotton crop will continue to witness a downward trend.
What need to be confronted head-on are two important issues that characterise cotton cultivation in the country: lack of mechanisation, and the use of poor quality seeds. These two underlying factors, among a host of other issues afflicting cotton farming, have resulted in lower yields per hectare as well as a poor quality crop.
The lack of mechanisation has meant that cotton-picking has largely been a manual effort that does not guard against the dangers of the crop being contaminated, resulting in a less-than-satisfactory quality of the cotton crop.
That has direct harmful consequences for the export of cotton and cotton-related products, also adversely impacting the textile sector’s market abroad. This has resulted in a situation where the textile industry has been forced to import better quality raw cotton rather than rely on the local crop to ensure that it maintains its share and standing in the international market, evidenced by the fact that textile mills have reduced their purchase of local raw cotton this year.
Furthermore, according to experts, the cotton seeds mostly grown in Pakistan, namely genetically modified Bt cotton, have lost their pest-resistant quality over the years.
Experts maintain that Bt genes need to be improved constantly so as to ensure that the seed remains resistant to attacks by insects and pests. This hasn’t happened in Pakistan with poor research on agronomic techniques and a failure to improve seed quality compromising the quality of the cotton crop and resulting in a reduction in output as well.
All this has culminated in an increasing trend of farmers opting for a more money-spinning alternative like sugarcane, which while good for short term profitability, has had multiple adverse consequences for the country’s agriculture sector.
Over the last two decades, our love affair with a sugarcane crop that guzzles massive amounts of water in a water-starved country has altered the contours of the agriculture sector.
The sugar industry has come to enjoy the patronage of the political elite, which has enabled it to secure favourable policies, only serving to compound the already dire state of cotton cultivation.
Policies that discourage sugarcane cultivation and that ensure better quality cotton is grown through increased mechanisation and the use of better quality seeds have become a must.
Research and development programmes that aim to improve the seed variety used in cotton farming, and that educate farmers regarding modern farming techniques and equipment have become the need of the hour.
The fate of a crop that contributes 10 percent to the agriculture GDP, and is a source of over half of our foreign exchange earnings besides providing employment to millions cannot be left to chance.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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