Pakistan’s overall estimated cotton crop production has reduced from 14.2 million bales to 10.847 million bales as compared to previous years cotton production of 11.58 million bales during the same season.
Sindh is expected to witness a shortfall of from 2.6 million bales to 1.4 million bales as compared to the production in previous season of 4.253 million bales.
However, making up for losses in Sindh, officials revised the estimates for Punjab up to 8.077m bales lifting the overall estimates for the season. Punjab produced 7.382m bales during the last season much lower than its historic record of producing around 10m bales.
Production estimates for Baluchistan were also revised upward to 0.15m, which is higher than the last year’s output of 0.117m bales. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is expected to produce around 0.02m bales.
Mr Naseem Usman, Cotton Analyst at Pakistan Agriculture Research commented, “The country’s cotton production has been under stress during the last four years as country mainly because of adverse effects of climate change and shortage of irrigation water and partly due lack of attention to the declining output from the successive governments. Cotton — semi-draught plant – can even survive in less irrigation water but the growers have to be educated and ensured of getting minimum required water for their cotton crop. There is an urgent need to increase country’s water reservoir capacity and shift towards drip irrigation from the current flood irrigation which had been done away in many countries to conserve water.”
