KARACHI: The country will face a shortfall of around 2 million cotton bales during crop season 2008-09 on more than one pretext, growers and traders said.

Minister for Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL), Nazar Muhammad Gondal said on Wednesday that the country would be able to achieve 13 million bales this crop season.

However, growers and traders said the revised target of the MINFAL is not achievable as the government’s estimates for 2006-07 and 2007-08 crop seasons were also not actualised. A director on Board of KCA, Ghulam Rabbani said low yield was expected during crop season 2008-09 on the back of paucity of water, poor production of quality seeds, inadequate supply of quality inputs and uncertified sowing of Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) variety of cotton in the country.

He said country achieved 11.6 million bales in the last season to a revised target of 14.11 million cotton bales while government has set a target of 14.11 million bales during 2008-09. He said most of the Bt cotton varieties were marketed with wrong notation of resistance to all pests. In some instances Bt cottonseed was mixed with non-Bt cottonseed, having negative affects on the yield.

According to a survey by National Agricultural Research Center (NARC) in Sindh and Punjab, it was observed almost 80 percent of cotton growing area in Sindh has become under unapproved Bt cotton (Australian Bt) with high incidence (60 to 100 percent) of Cotton Leaf Curl Virus (CLCV) infection.

He said due to reduction in the Pakistan’s crop, imports of cotton would also jump up by around 20 percent during 2008-09.

Due to lack of competency, the farmers would face financial crunch and country would have to import around 3.6 million bales in this crop season to meet the textile sector’s requirements. He said textile and spinning sector would face a hard time, as the dollar-rupee parity would increase the cost of production of an already ailing sector.

A senior member of Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) and president PCGA Sanghar cotton belt region, Rana Abdul Sattar said inadequate policies and irrigation water scarcity forced the government to revise the cotton crop target (2008-09). Besides these factors the food crisis have also contributed to this shortfall, as the government provided subsidies on wheat, sugarcane, and sunflower. Provision of this subsidy prompted the farmers to switch over to sunflower and rice.

Rana Abdul Sattar said quality and the volume of the crop, especially the Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) variety of cotton would not improve because use of uncertified seeds.

Sattar said the crop in Digri, Naukot, Sukkur, Khairpur and Nawabshah remained prone to attack of mealy bug and reddening of leaf, where 90 percent of BT cotton crop was sown.

He said concern was building that the mealy bug and CLCV would cause endanger the country’s largest cotton belt in Punjab, where the mealy bug has already attacked 25 percent crop.

He said around 50 percent of the total cultivation in the country is BT type cotton. Nearly 90 percent of this type is cultivated in Sindh and about 40 percent is cultivated in Punjab.