IN the second week of January, the Punjab Government imposed Section 144 to stop farmers from sowing cotton before April 15. The official notice came with the warning to destroy the crop sown before this deadline.

How far it succeeds in administratively imposing the restriction remains to be seen. However, the odds are in favour of the government. Stung by bad results of early sowing, the growers are already backing off.

The crop has lost acreage in non-core areas and the core cotton belt farmers were, by and large, not part of the early sowing streak anyway. Nevertheless, the ban reflects the provincial government’s efforts to save the crop from the avoidable problems.

According to farmers, academia, extension workers and policymakers, it was a step long overdue. They think that it will restore the original cropping pattern, break the pest cycle and help integrated pest management round the year, being the main factors responsible for cotton crop decline in the last few years.

The craze for early cotton sowing was born out of researchers’ preference and persuasion who argued that it could help growers to reduce cotton’s production cost

The craze for early cotton sowing was born out of researchers’ preference and persuasion who argued that it could help the farmers to reduce cotton’s production cost.

By the time temperatures rise in June and July, and pests start attacking, they advised: the crop would be old and strong enough to endure the pest pressure. Early sowing, it was thought, would also reduce the number of pesticide sprays.

Secondly, it could increase the yield: since the crop keeps yielding output as long as it stays in the field, it could be given more time, especially when it is robust as well.

Some farmers started sowing the crop early, even in February. It paid them as well. For next three years, they produced more and made money between 2010-13 before the production decline started.

However, the longer the crop stayed in the field, it faced more pest invasions. But the entire planning was riveted on escaping the cotton leave curl virus (CLCV), and little attention was paid to other equally damaging ones.

The CLCV used to claim 1m bales, the pink bollworm destroyed much more of the crop in 2014-15, scaring the farmers away from their choice of crop. Punjab lost 2m acres with 1.2m acres lost in the last one year alone.

The more pests hit the crop, the more sprays it needs to survive. Since the current crop has now had a nine-month (February to December) life cycle, the farmers have reported up to 23 sprays against the pink bollworm attack this year.

An additional problem came when most of the BT varieties, which had very low gene expression and covered over 90pc area, started becoming an easy host to the pest in just 100 days in the field.

The planners tamed the pink bollworm in 2015. With slightly better pest management, Punjab saw its yield jumping by 37pc. Despite huge acreage loss of 1.2m acres (from 5.5m acres to 4.38m acres), the production went up by 1m bales: from 6.34m bales in 2015 to 7.34m bales in 2016.

The average yield was one of the best the country ever had: 21.21 maunds per acre against a paltry 14.60 maunds per acre in 2015.

The planners are convinced that all residues of the crop that play host to the pest should be burnt (for cooking and heating) by the end of February. By taking sowing to the second half of April, the pest would not find any host to nest into for the next 45 days — a sufficient period to break its life cycle.

February sowing was perpetuating the cycle by shifting from residual to fresh crop. Planners feel that even a month could have been enough to kill the larvae, but another 15 days would provide an additional insurance.

The farmers have agreed to this official logic, but with some doubts: what if the pest still returns? Or another old pest reappears as did the pink bollworm after a hiatus of years? They want to be assured that the provincial agriculture department has a contingency plan to combat these probable situations.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, January 30th, 2017