Contract farming is blossoming

IN FOCUS/ COTTON

Contract farming is becoming the buzzword in cotton cultivation going by the statistics of the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI).

According to Vishwa Nath, adviser, Technology Mission on Cotton, CCI since the launch of the project in 2001, the area under coverage has been revised to 24,000 hectare from the initial estimate of 20,000 hectare as it is well on target for 2005-2006.

This is compared with the 5,000-6,000 hectare of area under cotton contract farming last year.

The targets for the northern, central, southern and east zones are 4,000 hectare, 8,000 hectare, 10,000 hectare and 2,000 hectare, respectively.

CCI is in talks with over 50 mills that are their prime buyers throughout the country, co-operatives and other organisations to assess their response in this regard.

Many mills including the Nahar Group of Mills in the North, Gokak Group of mills in Karnataka, Pratibha Sitex in Madhya Pradesh and Sanghi Spinners from Andhra Pradesh have already come forward to participate in the project.

Besides, CCI is also in talks with Arvind Mills. Super Spinning Mills in Tamil Nadu has also undertaken a project with aid from the state government, where CCI is a guarantor to the project.

Under the project, CCI arranges for high quality inputs, undertakes education of farmers at the village level, organises Melas, helps in improvement of know-how, and also helps to co-ordinate between the mills and the farmers.

At the state level, as on March 31, 2005, the Gujarat government has facilitated a memorandum of understanding which is a legal tripartite arrangement between the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee, the mills and the farmers whereby the farmers are bound to sell their produce to the mills that undertake the contract farming.

Besides, under the Mini-Mission III set for 2005-2006 the CCI is undertaking modernisation of market yards. For this the government is allocating Rs 90 lakh per mill, and Rs 150 lakh to set up a new mill.

Under this, the target is to cover 112 yards by 2007 but 87 are already completed while 25 more would be in the following year.

Under the Mini-Mission IV modernisaton of ginning and pressing factories has been undertaken. A total allocation of Rs 27 lakh has been made for this. The CCI hopes to target 500 factories by 2007 of which 300 are already modernised. The largest response has been from the Gujarat and Maharashtra region.

This aims to improve the cotton quality by minimising the contamination due to manual handling, whereby the level of trash should not be more than two to three per cent.

Over the next two years, the production of cotton is targeted at 250 lakh bales. According to the Cotton Development and Research Association under the Indian Cotton Mills' Federation's (ICMF- CDRA) vision statement the industry is further aiming to touch 350 lakh bales by 2010.