What’s going on in Punjab’s fertile crescent?

Shrinking area under cotton cultivation has everyone worried, except like all things Pakistani, the concern seems to be lacking in research.

Zoom in on Punjab, province with Pakistan’s over 70 percent cotton output, and one finds peculiar trends in cotton growing and yields. Over the five-year period since FY13, area under cotton cultivation has declined in 22 out of 23 cotton growing districts in south and central Punjab.

At 36 percent, the rate of decline has been more pronounced in central Punjab region; however, reduction in acreage has been more visible in southern districts due to the sheer size of the figure; almost 200 hectares.

Now that the reader has been sufficiently scared, one last peculiar nugget: Punjab’s most fertile cotton growing areas (by yield in kilos per hectare) were never the largest cotton growing areas to begin with.

While the myth peddled by most analysts and agri-experts suggests that erstwhile cotton belt has been taken over by a sugarcane ‘revolution’ in recent years, there is little evidence to back this notion.

Take Rajanpur. The district secures top position in the province with an unparalleled cotton yield close to 800 kg per hectares (last 5-year olympic average) and is also the only district where area under cultivation has recorded a decent growth of 26 percent over last five years.

Rajanpur also has the highest yield for sugarcane, which at 93,339 kg per hectares is more than 50 percent higher than national average. Yet Rajanpur features nowhere in the top 10 sugarcane growing districts of the province, lest the country. Nevertheless, in terms of total area and output, Rajanpur remains mostly irrelevant with less than five and ten percent share in the respective provincial pies.

In contrast, Punjab’s top cotton producing districts remain in Bahawalpur division (Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar and RY Khan districts), with a respectable but below national average yield of close to 720 kilos per hectare (5-year olympic average).

In contrast, while Bahawalpur division has consistently recorded highest cane yield in the province, it’s the central Punjab districts that dominates sugarcane cultivation, with over 56 percent share in cultivation. These include Faisalabad, Sargodha, Jhang and Chiniot regions, which feature no where in high cane yield regions of the province.

The only exception to this story is Rahim Yar Khan, which has a modest share in both sugarcane acreage and yield. However, that exception is mostly a JDW-miracle, which has invested in heavy mechanised and corporate farming due to proximity of group’s mills in the region.

With both cotton and sugarcane losing popularity in other southern districts, it remains a mystery as to what exactly is going on in Punjab’s districts? Answering these questions would require a closer look at on ground developments by researchers rather than simply being swayed by hysteria.