Bt cotton a boon for Punjab textile units

The production of Bt cotton in Punjab and Haryana has helped the textile units in the region.

The textile industry mainly needs long staple cotton. The traditional long staple cotton-growing pocket of north India is now in Pakistan. The import of long staple cotton from south is not economically viable. So most units use medium and short staple cotton.

The availability of better-quality cotton in the local market and its use in the production line have increased the per capita productivity of looms, says S S Aich, CEO of Nahar Industrial Enterprises Ltd (Fabrics).

Export-oriented unit Cheema Spintex (100 per cent) has replaced traditional cotton with Bt cotton. According to a company official, the price of Bt cotton is determined by market forces but it is available in ample quantity.

Rajiv Bhambri, vice-president (finance) of Supreme Yarns Ltd, told Business Standard 70 per cent of the total cotton input was Bt cotton and its use had been increasing.

The company is contemplating entering contract farming in Punjab. "The quality of Bt cotton in Madhya Pradesh still has an edge over what we get in Punjab and we want to fill this gap in quality through contract farming", he said.

The new Bollgard cotton technology has helped in the revival of cotton in the state. Many farmers in Punjab's Malwa belt in the past few years have switched to other crops due to dwindling returns of cotton on account of low per acre productivity. But the production again picked up in the past two years.

Talking to Business Standard, Bipin Solanki, deputy managing director of Mahyco Monsanto, the company that developed and launched the Bt Cotton seed in India, said a farmer invested Rs 400-450 per packet (one packet contains 450 gm of seeds sufficient for one acre) in conventional seeds and Rs 1,200-1,300 per packet in Bt seeds.

This additional cost of seeds saves him huge expenditure on pesticides and earns him an additional income of Rs 6,700 per acre, he says.

According to Solanki, farmers who planted Bollgard cotton in 2006 are likely to earn an additional Rs 7,026.5 crore ($1,551 million), based on 8.6 million acreage achieved during this crop season. Rural income is expected to increase by over 36 per cent as compared to the Rs 2,100 crore generated in 2005.

Bollgard results in reduced pesticide consumption and the 2006 crop is expected to save pesticides of 3.4 million kilolitres, as compared to 0.8 million kilolitres in 2005. This means for the fifth successive year, Bollgard cotton will benefit Indian farmers in terms of better yield, reduced pesticide use and higher profit.

MMB has sub-licensed the Bollgard technology to about 23 Indian seed companies, all of which are working to introduce the Monsanto gene into their own germplasm.

Bollgard is now sold in nine states in India and farmers currently have a choice of over 48 hybrids of Bollgard, supplied by 13 seed companies. The individual seed companies access the market and accordingly increase the production levels to meet the requirements of the farmers.