October 10, 2003	Friday	Sha’aban 13, 1424

KARACHI, Oct 9: Shortage of pesticides and the invasion of army bollworms have done the damage in the various cotton belts of Punjab. The Cotton Crop Assessment Committee (CCAC) is meeting in Multan on October 18 to find out the actual causes of pesticides shortage coupled with reviewing the production losses.

As the government officials are reluctant to reveal the figures of the actual damage to the cotton production in Punjab and still projecting the production target of 10.55 million bales, market sources say that the severe pest attack in the country’s biggest cash crop producing province may cause a drop of 10-20 per cent in production.

Vice-chairman of Crop Life Association (formerly Pakistan Agriculture Pesticides Association), Shahid Saleem also confirmed to Dawn from Lahore by telephone on Thursday that bollworm attack would definitely have an impact on the cotton yield.

“I cannot give you the actual loss to the yield but it is a fact that the pest attack will have an impact,” he said, adding that increase in area sown might help in compensating the losses but it was hard to give the real impact on cotton production.

He also says that the shortage of pesticides in Punjab still looms large and the situation will persist for another eight or 10 days as the cotton crop is heading towards maturation. Farmers usually avoid to spray pesticides on the plant at the maturation or picking stage.

To some extent, heavy unprecedented rains in Punjab can be blamed for cotton crop vegetation, which later resulted in severe attack of army bollworm, he said.

The association with the help of growers is conducting a comprehensive survey to find out the actual root cause of this situation, shortage of pesticides and lack of pest control.

“This study will help us to adopt precautionary measures to avert any crisis in the next cotton crop season,” officials maintain.

However, the market sources said that the shortage of pesticides in this season was beyond understanding in view of frequent imports of pesticides and carryover stocks of 18-20 per cent last year. Pakistan’s annual imports of pesticides range between $80 and $90 million per year and the entire pesticides market hovers between Rs10 and Rs12 billion.

A senior official of the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) ruled out low cotton production in Punjab owing to heavy pest attack. “If there is any loss — it can be compensated to an extent through the increase in area sown, which is nine per cent higher as compared to the last year,” he added. He said a meeting of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Islamabad on October 4 reviewed the situation in which the provincial governments assured that the respective production target would be achieved as the highest area sown could offset the losses caused by the pest attack.

Pakistan is anticipating 10.55 million cotton bales in 2003-04 in the area sown on 3.05 million hectares as compared to 2.79 million hectares in 2002-03. Punjab accounts for eight million bales, while Sindh produces 2.4 million bales. The rest comes from Balochistan and NWFP.

The PCCC official says that the shortage of pesticides still exists. However, pesticides will be used for few more days as pest attack usually depresses when temperature changes. He said that actually the private sector had all the authority for import, distribution and marketing.

Till August, cotton crop in Punjab was in perfect condition but in September army worm or heliothis attacked and their population grew phenomenally in cotton producing areas like Rahim Yar Khan, Ghotki, Bahawalpur, Sadiqabad, Multan and Lodhran.

About the shortage of pesticides, he said that available stocks of pesticides had exhausted much earlier due to its higher use right from the early season and overplaying of the campaign in the print and electronic media to save crop from the pest attack. Because of increase in area sown, growers continued to spray heavily that later created shortage of pesticides.

The attack of insect was noted in Sindh but not to the extent as compared to Punjab.