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ISLAMABAD, Oct 6: The country will achieve cotton crop target of 10.55 million bales during the year 2003-04 despite virulent pest attack witnessed in September, experts have informed the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL), according to an official.
While describing the state of the cotton crop at a recent meeting of the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) chaired by MINFAL secretary Salik Nasir Ahmed, the experts cited two reasons for this upbeat prognosis: Firstly, the area sown to cotton this year exceeded the target of 2.86 million hectares by 6.6 per cent. So any shortfall in output would be more than compensated for the increase in acreage.
Secondly, the pest attack was not country-wide. It was limited in its extent and mainly concentrated in Rahim Yar Khan, Lodhran, Multan, Bahawalpur, Muzaffargarh and Khanewal. The attack followed unprecedented rains in these areas.
The resultant humidity rendered the environment especially conducive to the Army worm and Heliothes — the new name given to American boll worm. This led to a sharp spurt in demand for pesticides, hence the shortage. Nevertheless, the attack had since subsided, the experts reported. They, however, conceded that the plants thus affected might give lower yields.
According to a large grower, however, one of the reasons was the supply of wrong kind of pesticides sold by the dealers to the growers, particularly small farmers.
A committee headed by Agricultural Development Commissioner Dr Mohammad Hanif had already been formed to monitor the situation, the secretary told the meeting. The meeting also discussed present structure of the PCCC, which was established way back in 1956. The task for restructuring the PCCC was entrusted to a committee with Dr Kauser Abdullah Malik, member (Biosciences), Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, as its chairman.
YIELD: Dr Hanif will also chair a committee to look into the causes underlying decline in the per acre yield of cotton and submit its report within three months. The acreage assigned in the target for the cotton crop 2003-04 was 15 per cent more than the area sown last year. But the production was targeted to exceed that of the previous year was only three per cent more, signifying 12 per cent decrease.
In fact, there had not only been decrease in yield, it had also declined in the last 10 years or so. One of the factors, it was suggested, was the widespread use of non-recommended varieties. According to one estimate, the area sown to these varieties was 0.5 million acres.
The secretary, Agriculture Punjab, opined that the entire cotton germ plasm available in Pakistan was incapable of resisting the curl leaf virus. The answer, however, was not to resort to more pesticides but to rationalize their use. In contrast to multiple sprays, it was pointed out,
Uzbekistan, a major cotton producing country, sprayed pesticides only once — that too in the beginning. Subsequently, only the natural enemies of pests were released into the fields. In Pakistan, however, arrangements to culture these organisms on a large enough scale are simply non-existent.
CONTAMINATION: The committee also heard a concern being expressed over the inability to make cotton free of contamination and the obsolete machinery used by the ginning factories. The result was that lint coming out of these factories was of very poor quality.
What is more, Aptma too did not seem interested in the policy of contamination-free cotton, the meeting noted. Nevertheless, the recent measures taken by the government to standardize cotton, including the enactment of provincial legislation had remained largely un-implemented.
