Owing to the best crop management practices and increasing price trend of international cotton market, the two main cotton producing provinces, Punjab and Sindh, have surpassed the crop sowing targets by 1.86 and 1.21 percent respectively during the current sowing season.
For the cotton-crop sowing season 2011-12, about 6.177 million acres of land was set to cultivate cotton to fulfil the domestic requirements as well as export targets, said Cotton Development Commissioner, Khalid Abdullah here Monday. Punjab has achieved 101.86 percent of its set sowing targets for current sowing season as it has cultivated the crop over 6.292 million acres of land, showing an increase of 1.86 percent, he added. Meanwhile, he said that cotton crop was cultivated over 1.625 million acres of land in Sindh as against the set target of 1.606 million acres. The province has achieved its sowing targets by 101.21 percent, showing an increase of 1.21 percent.
The Cotton Commissioner further informed that this year, about 7.783 million hectare land was set as target to cultivate cotton where as the crop has been sown over 7.883 million hectare. The overall crop sowing targets was achieved by 101.28 percent showing an increase of 1.28 percent of the set targets for current season and 1.3 percent higher than the sowing of last year, he added. He added that cotton sowing has registered an increase of 0.067 percent as compared to last year, while in Sindh it increased by 16.05 percent during the same period.
Khalid said that crop condition is very satisfactory, no report of any break up of any sucking pests like white flies, jassids, thrips or mealy bug. Incidents of cotton leaf curl virus are also low and no hot spot has yet been reported from any part of cotton growing area of the country, he remarked. He opined that record high cotton prices of the last year probably resulted in better crop management, especially weed and white fly management, and resulted in low virus occurrence in the country. It is presumed and hoped, the production target of 14.98 million bales will be achieved if no natural calamity occurs, he remarked.
He observed that recently, government has also allowed hedge trading of cotton in stock exchange markets with "no commodity delivery" commitments resulted in price decreasing trend in the country. Cotton trade used to be done through Karachi Cotton Association only.