LAHORE: The textile industry may face a crisis as the country is in danger of missing the cotton sowing target in the wake of an alarming water shortage.

So far only 70 per cent of the sowing target has been achieved, admits an official of the agriculture department. He sees no chance of attaining the cotton crop production target of 14.37 million bales for the 2018-19 season as the water scarcity issue is not going to be resolved soon.

The cotton sowing season begins in the first week of April and ends on May 31. Punjab is likely to sow the crop on 5.7m acres.

Reports from Punjab’s cotton belt reveal that Panjnad, Abbasia, Dera Ghazi Khan, Muzaffargarh and all other canals in the region are running at less than 50 per cent of their designed capacities. Whereas “low flow losses” are adding to the worries of the tail-end farmers as prolonged power loadshedding in the countryside is making irrigation tubewells useless.

High temperature, scarce water may affect lint quality

The cotton belt region comprising Sahiwal, Multan, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan divisions are facing 13 to 14 hours of loadshedding, claims Chaudhry Anwer, president of his own faction of Pakistan Kissan Ittehad. He says half of the irrigation-purpose tubewells are presently lying idle for want of power badly affecting the cotton sowing.

He says that those who have somehow sown the cotton seed are worried as rising temperatures in Punjab plains have burnt 20 per cent of the sown seed due to want of first watering required for germination of seed within four days of its sowing.

He fears more losses if the crop failed to get second watering when the seed starting leafing and claims that lint quality of the crop that will survive the heat wave will be compromised.

Dr Sagheer Ahmed of the Cotton Research Institute says because of high temperatures cotton crop needs frequent watering but challenges Chaudhry Anwer’s views that the current heat wave has burnt the sown seed.

According to him, the crop has been burnt, like every year, in sandy lands of Layyah where the seeds are not sown in furrows. “Only windstorms can damage the crop where sowing is done in furrows. And so far the cotton belt has not witnessed this situation.”

Dr Ahmed said as most of the cotton crop has been sown after May 15 and thus has not yet reached the flowering stage there is no chance of damage to the quality of lint.

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2018