Pakistan Agriculture Scientists Association (PASA) President Jamshed Cheema has appealed to the Prime Minister to fix the support price for cotton crop at Rs 6,500 per 40 kg to save the farmers community. While talking to a delegation of growers at his office at Multan Road on Friday, he said that thousands of farmers would be affected due to the current price of cotton, which was even much less than their expenditures on the crop.
Jamshed Cheema said that the growers are considering stopping the sowing of cotton due to the low return and high cost of inputs adding if growers opted for it, it would lead to a massive loss to the national economy. He said that prices of fertilisers, pesticides, fuel and seeds are increasing day by day and the farmers are under severe pressure to meet the running expenditure. He said while cotton prices are increasing in the international market, its rates in the local market are very low which is totally unfair. He said that the government should provide sufficient relief to the millions of farmers across the country by increasing the support price of cotton and providing the agriculture inputs on subsidised rates.