RY Khan loses cotton on 130k acres of land

People anticipate import of large quantity of the produce

RAHIM YAR KHAN:

The total domestic production in the cotton zones across the country, including Rahim Yar Khan, has fallen to an unprecedented level due to one of the heaviest spells of rain and floods in the history of the country.

Rahim Yar Khan, which is the largest cotton producer in Punjab and which also has the credit of being the largest cotton producer in the country until 2009, has had the misfortune of seeing cotton sown over an area of 130,000 acres getting totally destroyed.

The crop cultivated over four-and-a-half acres escaped disaster though its quality did get affected.

There is a wave of concern sweeping across the entire cotton sector of Rahim Yar Khan. Since the cotton crop could not be picked at the time of its blooming, plants have started sprouting from the cotton seeds.

There has been an unprecedented decrease in farmers' income, and people are anticipating that the textile mills of Rahim Yar Khan might have to import cotton in large quantities despite the fact that there is a strong upward trend in cotton prices across the world.

Due to heavy rains, record level of moisture in the cotton fields has been registered, and perhaps for the first time in the history of the country, the seeds in the cotton balls have started to germinate due to which there is a fear of 50% decrease in the total domestic production of cotton. There are also fears that a large amount of edible oil would also be imported this year. According to the experts, the federal and provincial governments must take emergency measures and provide farmers with the engines to drain water out of the fields and also provide herbicides at subsidized rates to save the cotton crop to some extent.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Cotton Ginners Forum, Ehsanul Haque, said that due to limited supply of quality cotton, there were reports that many textile mills had been closed in many parts of the country.

He said that there was a threat of more textile mills getting shut down if rain didn’t stop immediately.

He said there were reports of a record decrease in cotton production worldwide due to adverse weather conditions affecting the cotton crop in all the major cotton producing countries, including the USA, India and China.

This meant a record rise in cotton prices across the world, including Pakistan.

He said that the price of cotton in Punjab had reached Rs23,000 per maund while in Sindh it was selling at Rs22,000 a maund.

He said that there were reports of further increase in the cotton prices.

He said that after rains and floods extraordinarily damaged the cotton crop, the meeting of Cotton Crop Assessment Committee (CCAC), which is a federal agency, was suddenly postponed on August 22.

This meeting was due to allocate the target of the total domestic production of cotton, which had been earlier set at 10.1 million bales.

He said that if the country was spared of any new spell of rains, the total domestic production of cotton in the country this year was expected to be around six million bales.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2022.