With the high prices offered on cotton by exporters, farmers are engaging in cotton cultivation, which is expected to lower retail prices of cotton apparels In a bid to earn high profits, farmers are opting to increase the acreage of cotton in India. Most farmers are also finding it better to cultivate cotton due to low requirement of water supply for irrigation, especially in the northern states. As a result, farmers are moving back to cotton cultivation instead of cultivating crops like paddy. However, it should also be noted that farmers are treading with caution as regards increasing cotton acreage due to the ban imposed on cotton exports since April 2010.
 It is expected that the cotton acreage this year would either remain same or witness a slight rise. It has been estimated that cotton acreage might surge from 10.17 million hectares in 2009 to around 11 million hectares in 2010. Rise in cotton acreage is expected in states like Maharashtra, which is regarded as one of the leading producers of the commodity. Due to high prices offered in the global markets, a number of exporters are able to encourage farmers to engage in cotton cultivation by procuring the commodity at attractive prices from them.
“Soyabean is widely grown in the Indian soil as farmers fetch high revenues from it every year. However, this year farmers are looking at cotton as the commodity that will help them to cash in higher profits as compared to soyabean,” says Ashok Sehgal, proprietor of Adarsh Ltd, a small-sized cotton exporter in Porbandar, Gujarat.
Due to good remuneration offered to farmers last year, it is quite unlikely that they would divert from cotton cultivation. Those farmers who had cultivated soyabean were unable to receive returns like cotton.
Impact of increasing cotton acreage
“With the increase in cotton acreage, the production of the commodity is set to increase. Therefore, it is expected that cotton availability in India would increase, thereby bringing down retail prices of apparels and lessen consumer woes,” says Sunil Manwani, director of Impex Ltd, a small-sized cotton exporter in Pune.
Since cotton seems to be an attractive commodity for farmers and exporters, the government should take a quick decision as regards lifting the export ban on the commodity before cotton sowing season starts.
Sabrina Mitchell |
