SAHIWAL: Cotton production has witnessed a 23 percent increase compared to the previous year in Sahiwal division. Last year, 137,000 bales were produced, but this year’s harvest has surged to an impressive 179,000 bales, and of them 116,734 bales have hit ginning factories.

The Agriculture Department says that cotton was cultivated across 106,000 acres. Cotton farmers received a commendable rate for their crop, with market prices ranging from Rs8,500 to 9,000 per maunds.

The department attributed the improved yield to several key factors, such as effective crop management, favourable environmental conditions, timely guidance from the agriculture department, a proactive response from growers, and fewer incidents of insect pests during the early stages of crop growth all contributed to the successful harvest.

However, the recent flooding in River Satluj, which affected 1,000 acres in district Pakpattan, prevented the total production from being even higher.

Cotton growers in Pakpattan urged the Punjab government to provide compensation for the cotton crop damaged by the recent flooding in River Satluj.

Dawn learned that in a recent meeting of the Divisional Cotton Assessment Committee, the shortage of urea fertilizer in Sahiwal division was discussed. Growers require 950,000 bags of 50 kg urea fertilizer in the coming 30 days alone.

Commissioner Shoaib Iqbal directed the agriculture department to compile an accurate estimate of urea utilization for the next three months.

This information will help the divisional administration formulate a comprehensive supply plan for both urea and DAP fertilizers.

In recent decades, Pakistan’s cotton production has gone down and in years 2012-13 cotton total production was 11.129 million bales while this production had gone down to 3.210 million bales in the 2023.

Expert says Pakistan faced a Rs672.69 billion loss because of low yield in cotton production last year.

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2023