The Xinjiang province of China has developed domestically-made machinery cotton pickers to harvest cotton efficiently, likely to attain over 80% higher picking work compared with the traditional way of manual cotton picking.
Also, it would help the province to cover the large-scale cotton area in one go, again a quantum jump in the area of agriculture. The innovative approach of Chinese technicians is worth appreciation as the machine also rolls the cotton into bales mechanically to load it onto vehicles to transport it to their desired destination.
Manual cotton picking in all the regional competitors, particularly Pakistan, has always been an issue for traders as the cotton bolls register a gap of at least two months before and first and the last boll opens. At least two to three pickings are required to completely harvest the crop. Picking usually starts in September and continues till December and even January.
Farooq Bajwa, Director Farmers Associate Pakistan (FAP) told Textalks that the ongoing floods have already played havoc with standing crops while picking of the remaining ones has become a Herculean task because of the non-availability of sufficient workers at present.
According to him, Pakistan should also look for mechanical means to enhance cotton picking besides investing in measures to enhance cotton production in the country.
In India, similarly, normally farmers go for two to five pickings of cotton till the final stage of crop harvesting. Sometimes, the whole exercise proves uneconomical during the subsequent pickings after the first three ones by manual labour.
