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Watch
Cotton crop size estimated
at 10.4m bales
KARACHI, Jan 8: Cotton crop size this season has been assessed
at 10.4 million bales ex-farm by the Cotton Crop Assessment
Committee (CCAC) of the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC).
The meeting was held on Monday at the PCCC. It was chaired by
M Shafi Niaz, adviser to the chief executive on food,
agriculture and livestock and attended by the officials of
concerned public and private sector organizations.
Taking stock of the situation and the assessment made by the
provincial governments as well as other stakeholders, the
committee unanimously agreed to a possible crop size of 10.4m
bales on ex-farm basis this season with Punjab producing
around 8.1 million bales, Sindh 2.2m and Balochistan 0.1
million bales.
The committee, on the advice of the provincial agriculture
departments, maintained this year's cotton area sown at 3.125
million hectares as against the federal committee on
agriculture's target of 2.56 million hectares and the last
year's area of 2.93 million hectares, thereby showing an
increase of 22 per cent over the earlier envisaged target and
around 7 per cent over the last year.
The PCGA informed participants of the meeting that the seed
cotton arrivals by Jan 1, 2002 were of the order of 7.853
million bales as against 8.601 million bales recorded by the
same date last year thus showing a shortfall of 8.7 per cent.
The provincial break-up, however, indicated that the arrivals
in Sindh were higher by 5.38 per cent, but these were lower by
12.48 per cent in Punjab.
The textile mills had purchased 5.547 million bales till Dec
31, 2001. The unsold stocks available with the ginners were
reported at 2.181 million bales as against 1.743m bales of
last year.
It was observed that due to foggy weather, particularly in
Punjab, the flow of arrivals by end December were affected.
Also, on account of the recent decline in seed cotton market
prices sufficient quantities were still lying with the farmers
and the middlemen.
The committee was also informed that due to fog the moisture
content in cotton has increased and, therefore, the ginneries
are reluctant to buy cotton from the farmers.
It was felt that the provincial extension services were
required to eliminate the chances of carry-forward of the pink
bollworm and army worm larvae to save the next crop.
Consequently, the committee realized this could only be
achieved by burning the cotton sticks so that larvae could be
killed.
Courtesy Dawn January 9, 2002 |
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