ISLAMABAD, May 20: The government should fix a support price of raw cotton and arrange to lift at least 1 to 1.5 million tons of cotton from the farmers immediately after its harvesting in September in order to save them from potential loss.

This was proposed by two members of the Federal Textile Board, Mr Siddiq Akbar Bokhari, a progressive farmer and Khawaja Mohammad Azam, a ginner during their meetings here with the officials of Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal).

The induction of new early varieties in Punjab has solved the problem of overlapping between the cotton and wheat crops on the one hand, but on the other it has created some new problems. Previously, standing cotton crop intruded on the Rabi season and wheat sowing had to await removal of standing cotton plants from the fields till December.

Unless these issues were addressed by the government on time, the cotton crop and its growers might be in for tremendous losses, they told Dr Kader Bakhsh, the wheat-cotton commissioner in Minfal.

The new varieties have reduced the gestation period of cotton from 160 to 125 days. In Egypt, by contrast, the gestation period of long staple cotton was 300 days. This was a laudable achievement of the Pakistani scientists, they conceded. As a result, the farmers get sufficient time to prepare their fields for sowing wheat.

But the government has not come up with any plan for dealing with the consequent two-month gap between harvesting and ginning season. In this situation, as the phutti is likely to suffer deterioration as a result of inappropriate storage, the farmers have no option but to dispose of their product at throwaway prices, they argued.

The government should arrange to lift the crop from farmers for two months and at the end of that period, sell it in market when it can get the right price of cotton. Both the government and the farmers would only gain from such an arrangement.

The Cotton Commissioner, however, asked that which organization of the government was in a position to purchase the cotton, according to a source. In the case of wheat, there were the provincial food departments and PASSCO to purchase wheat to maintain certain minimum levels of storage of the staple food of Pakistanis, while there was no organization to purchase wheat.

In the case of cotton, he pointed out, the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) already burned its fingers after the ginners reneged on their contracts with it. Moreover, he said the World Bank and IMF would not allow the government to intervene in the market.

Mr. Bukhari, who holds Pride of Performance for his innovations in the production of cotton, also pointed out other drawbacks of early varieties, particularly in Punjab, where the production of NIAB 78 has been banned owing to its susceptibility to virus. In Sindh, however, there is no restriction on NIAB 78.

The yield of cotton in Punjab has plummeted from an average of 28 maunds to 18-20 maunds ever since the introduction of new varieties a couple of years back .

Moreover, the varieties, which are allowed to be cultivated in Punjab are susceptible to virus, requiring higher application of pesticides.

Another drawback, as pointed out by Khawaja Azam and Mr Bukhari, was the relative weakness of the staple of these varieties. From 94,000, characteristic of older varieties, the staple strength has fallen by 7 to 8 thousand. It now hovers between 85,000 and 87,000, argued Mr. Bukhari.

The reduced strength was incompatible with the high speed machinery imported in to Pakistan recently at a cost of $1.5 billion. This would be detrimental to the quality of textiles produced in Pakistan with serious implications for its competitiveness in the export market.

Mr. Bukhari, himself a scientist-farmer, expressed his strong belief that the post-2005 world scenario was pregnant with immense opportunities for Pakistan, particularly in the cotton- yarn and cloth markets abroad, provided the impediments to quality-production are overcome.

By way of illustration, he said, Indonesia imported 3 million bales of cotton and reaped from it exports worth $9 billion. As against, 10 million bales used for spinning in Pakistan, yielded only $6.5 billion. Bangladesh, another country dependent entirely on foreign cotton though, was earning 400 per cent more foreign exchange from export of readymade garments. This was because of better quality and design.

Dr Kader Bakhsh said in such situations trade-offs between advantages and drawbacks were inescapable.

He was confident that our scientists would, before long, introduce new early, short- gestation varieties, that would also address the problems of lower productivity and tolerance to pests.