The cotton acreage is likely to fall in Punjab next year. The state registered a sharp decline in area under cotton cultivation this year and agriculture experts feel that the trend is likely to continue. Last year, the total area under cotton cultivation was 604,000 hectares while this year, the acreage is estimated to have declined to over 535,000 hectares. It is projected that the state might witness a fall of 5-10 per cent in cotton acreage next season.
Since 2006-07, the state has been witnessing a fall in the cotton acreage. In 2006-07, the area under cotton cultivation was 614,000 hectares.
However, the fall in acreage this year was mainly due to a sense of apprehension among the farmers, as last year their crop was affected by the mealy bug, due to which yield was affected and the total production was to the tune of 2.35 million bales.
This year, it is expected that the per acre yield will touch 700 kg per hectare and the total production will touch 2.2 million bales.
The mealy bug attack coupled with shortage of labourers are attributed as reasons behind the fall in cotton acreage. Since cotton plucking is a labour-intensive job and the crop is vulnerable to diseases, farmers are opting paddy as its yield per acre is higher than that of cotton.
Speaking to Business Standard, Harvinder Singh, a farmer in Bathinda, said, “plucking of cotton is a highly labour-intensive job. We basically rely on Rajasthani labourers for the purpose. As the monsoon in Rajasthan was good this year, we have witnessed shortage of labourers in the plucking season. As a result, we were forced to pay higher wages to the labourers.”
Similar sentiments was echoed by another farmer, Sher Singh. “Plucking of cotton goes on till January, which is very time consuming. We can easily have two harvests like paddy and wheat during the period. Also, yield of paddy and wheat is very high as compared to cotton. Besides high MSP of wheat is an incentive to cultivate wheat,” he said.
