Climate-hit cotton crop

The nation's cotton output has shown a worrying decline over the past year, and that is without even accounting for the impact of recent floods. Recent data from the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) indicates a precipitous 17% decline in cotton arrivals, and even Punjab, which had been slightly outpacing its performance year-on-year, is now showing a decline of 6%.

Erratic weather patterns have devastated crops in some areas. This season's cotton crops have been assailed by a vicious combination of extreme heatwaves and torrential monsoon rains. Prolonged high temperatures scorched cotton buds and hindered plant growth, while intense rainfall led to waterlogged fields, leaching the soil of nutrients and creating conditions ripe for several pests. These conditions decimated both the quantity and quality of the yield, according to industry experts.

But beyond the onslaught of bad weather, policy failures have also been factored into the poor performance. Industry experts have said climate volatility was exacerbated by policy missteps, including new taxes on ginning and inadequate subsidies for seeds, which slowed down ginning and discouraged farmers. While the taxes have since been rolled back, it will take several weeks for the impact of the decision to be felt.

It is also worth noting that there is a wide gap between the figures released by PCGA and those by the official Punjab Crop Reporting Service, which claims cotton production in Punjab reached 809,000 bales by August 14 — more than twice of what the industry group recorded. While small variance is understandable due to differences in data collection methods, a gap as large as this raises eyebrows over the quality of data being used by the government and industry to formulate policies that affect the entire country, lest we forget that cotton and textiles account for over 60% of exports.