A small cotton producer, Arshad Khaskheli in Sanghar — a hub of cotton production — could not salvage his cotton on a four-acre plot. He, however, was able to get some produce — 10 maunds by August — from another two acres of land fed by a tubewell.

Mr Arshad attributed this loss of produce to water shortages that hit the early Kharif period. While his contention about the timely unavailability of water seems correct, the ever-shrinking acreage and production in Sindh specifically must be seen beyond the water-availability context. Though the arrival of cotton in ginning factories has already begun, fears abound that ongoing monsoon downpour spells may have negative implications on crops.

Cotton’s survival faces serious challenges that range from policymaking, reliance on imports and inadequate cotton pricing despite rising input costs to growers’ increasing disinterest in cotton cultivation, unavailability of quality seeds, and weather issues driven by climate change.

This sector — white gold that it is — caters to multiple needs, such as providing animal feed, catering to around 20 per cent of domestic edible oil production, and engaging close to 80,000 female cotton pickers, thus helping them earn seasonally, so continued losses in the sector have materialised into direct economic losses in these areas.

The crop’s survival faces serious challenges that are not limited to water availability alone

Farmers, on the other hand, lament inadequate cotton prices, thus switching to........

© Dawn Business