Pakistan may not reach the target of 8 million acres set for cotton sowing

Delay in the cotton sowing will result in the late harvesting. The sowing process, which was to be completed by end of May, will finish now by the end of June. The target set for cotton sowing is eight million acres, while the farmer till to date have sown cotton-seeds at about 60 to 65 percent land only.

Farmers might not be able sow the seed on the rest of 35 to 40 percent land by the end of June and are expected to sow cotton at 7.2 acre to 7.4 acre of land in the new season.

With delay in sowing, cotton harvesting may be delayed beyond one month if it rains harsh in June and July. The sowing, which was supposed to begin in the end of February and/or beginning of March, actually started late in April and are still engaged in planting the seeds.

Moreover, the rainfall in March have washed out whatever little sowing by farmers in February-March in Punjab, which produces about 80 percent of total cotton in the country.

However, the situation in Sindh, which produces rest of the country’s cotton, is not different. Farmers in the province also started late sowing. One of the major reasons of the delayed sowing was prolonged winter season.

According to provisional data of Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, the country total need stands at about 15 million bales and it has produced 13.39 million bales (of 155 kilogram) in the fiscal year 2014, although it was 3.69 percent higher than 12.91 million bales produced in the preceding fiscal year. But there is a deficit in the production by 1.61 which is met through imports.

Production from current sowing is feared to be lower than the last year’s production, as farmers are planting cotton-seeds at comparatively lesser area of land.

Some of the farmers preferred to sow other seasonal crop than cotton, as in the outgoing cotton season they had to sell it at throwaway prices when (especially in March–April 2014) textile mill-owners made duty-free import of cotton-yarn from India.

Another reason of likely lower production would be little availability of working capital with farmers, which they required to buy fertiliser. Moreover, lower fertilising would result into decline in yield.

An also low quality seed not having the capacity for germination is the reason for decline in sowing. There are companies, which are selling the same quality of seeds under three different names: MNH886, FH142 and IUB222.
Cotton harvesting set