Telangana Farmers Take To Cotton Cultivation This Season

Market News

Telangana Farmers Take To Cotton Cultivation This Season

Telangana farmers have increased cotton cultivation by over 26.5% this season. This has prompted the state government to start arrangements for the procurement of the fibre crop well in advance. Poor market price for alternative crops, and the favourable seasonal conditions for cotton have led to this increased cultivation of cotton.

The Agriculture Department has put the extent of cotton cultivation this season at 17.84 lakh hectares, more than half of the 34.42 lakh hectares covered by all crops so far, against 14.10 lakh hectares last year.

Good prices

"Another major reason that has driven farmers to go for cotton this year is the good price commanded by the crop last year - better than the minimum support price of Rs 4,160 per quintal", a senior official said. The Centre has already fixed the MSP at Rs 4,320 per quintal for long-staple variety of cotton this year.

Failure of the crop in the northern and western parts of the country due to drought conditions and the pest attack in Pakistan last year had jacked up the prices of the fibre crop in the national markets and for exports. However, an advisory issued by the Telangana government suggesting that the farmers go for alternative crops in the wake of cotton farmers' suicides a year earlier, had restricted the cultivation of the crop to only 14.10 lakh hectares.

The state government plans to increase the number of procurement centres to 150 this year, and has directed the marketing department to prepare an action plan for cotton procurement before August-end. The CCI operated 84 procurement centres in the State last year against 90 planned ones. The state government urged it to add another 66 centres this year. A representation has also been made to Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani on the matter.

Water shortage, late sowing

Meanwhile, an inter-state surveillance meeting on cotton crop was organised at Bathinda in which officials from Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan participated to take stock of the white fly menace.

It was the sixth such meeting this cotton season. In Punjab, officials categorically said that apart from pesticides, shortage of water was a major problem faced by cotton farmers.

Agriculture officials from the three states categorically maintained that the next 25 days were crucial for the cotton crop and special care needs to be taken. Nearly one lakh hectare area under cotton was sown late and hence it needs to be monitored on a regular basis.