Cotton Farming

 

1.       Recommendations

Following are the recommendations based on problems discussed in the above section related to cotton farming in Multan Region. With the help of the below recommendations, the farmers and the government can increase the production of cotton.

1.1        High Prices

In cases of food price shocks where government assistance for small farmers is considered essential, the timing for announcing their price subsidies (for inputs or outputs) is vital if a maximum response to the supply is wanted. The government's response is important. More broadly, timely sharing of economic, price and climatic data would assist farmers in making informed choices and improve the effectiveness of agricultural planning.

In the Multan area, especially for the poorest section of small farmers, direct and well-focused safety nets and social assistance programmes to safeguard the poor from rising agricultural prices are required. However, employing economic policies to safeguard consumers (e.g. border trade restrictions), distorts production incentives and has a detrimental effect on national food security in the long run.

Farmers' surveys have shown that deficiency is an important factor in farmers’s poor response to rising cotton farming practices. Better water management, via water collection and additional irrigation, would thus significantly increase the production response of all rainfall-dependent agricultural units that comprise the bulk of the region's production units.

Faced with significant price volatility, small farmers are risk-averse. Simple financial instruments (for example, long or future contracts with traders) may be created for the Multan area in which agricultural prices are market-driven and unpredictable, allowing farmers to hide from price fluctuations and to boost their production response.

1.2        Lack of Research

Further obstacles to farmers include a lack of research. Most farmers know what to do, but they break the laws since they don't know whether a good crop will be available. The Agriculture Ministry should do its best, but it appears that its assistance for farmers is understaffed. The number of agricultural engineers in the Multan area who can provide farmers with technical assistance is minimal. The ministry should thus ensure that the farm engineers who can conduct research and get maximum returns to receive income.

Farmers require solid technical assistance and the feeling that their issues are common ones. It is necessary to reinforce the sense of community and urge farmers to establish cooperatives in each region. Instead of each other, farmers will encounter difficulties together, which eventually provides them more leverage when negotiating input material prices. Such practices has also been used by India in order to reduce the cotton farming issues

1.3        Pest Attack

Following are some suggestions to reduce the Pest attack in order to sustain the Cotton farming. These suggestions are based on literature of other countries. I recommend these because other countries get maximum yields from these steps such as India, Bangladesh and China.

Organic cotton protection biological control is a technique of managing insect pests and illnesses that use other species that depend on predation, parasitism and grasshopper or certain other natural processes that interact with active farmers. Predators, parasitism, and diseases are the natural enemies of insect pests, recognised to be biological control agents. For biological weed management, agents are predators of plant seeds, herbivores, and pathogens; biological agents are antagonists for plant diseases. Bangladesh and India introduced biological agents in cotton farms to places where they do not exist naturally or farmers can release the natural enemies additionally, increasing the natural population.

Organic standards are intended for the usage of chemicals such as pyrethrin and rotenone that exist naturally. Cotton Farmers should avoid the use of synthetic pesticides with a wide range that significantly disrupt natural controls and encourage secondary pests like spider mites, brown plant-hoppers and Rhizoctonia. There are very few synthetic chemicals, such as hydrogen peroxide, lime and potassium bicarbonate, permitted to grow in cotton, for example, fixed squid (copper hydroxide, copper oxide, copper oxide, sulphate).

Utilize a technique to prevent the use of plants or habitats for pests by distorting their preferences in oviposition, discriminating against plants or the placement of both adults and immatures. These may be accomplished via methods including crop isolation, mixed cultivation and crop rotation. The seed and seed timing may be utilised to enable young plants to achieve a tolerant phase before an attack takes place and to minimise the vulnerable attack time. To distract insect attacks from crops, the management of traps, nurseries and the surrounding environment is included.

1.4        Government Facilities

Government should support Pakistan's cotton sector by educating thousands of farmers and employees in the Best Cotton Initiative to minimise losses of around US$350 million a year via inadequate production, transport and storage methods.

Government should strengthen medium-sized farmers to adopt the Better Cotton Standard System in order to safeguard crops from dangerous diseases and pesticides and to preserve agricultural ecosystems. More employees in cotton picking, health and safety, the empowerment of women and the avoidance of child labour should also be educated in women. There is the biggest example of china who is continually giving training to their farmers that resulting in high yields.

In order to produce more cotton and benefit, the government must subsidise pesticides, seeds and other materials for needy farmers. In addition, the government is expected to rise by Rs 5,000 to 40kg cotton price. To improve cotton production, the Federal Government should guarantee that the measures are taken. As the government of India has increased the prices of cotton which shows significant results in production of Cotton.

However, the subsidies seem to be the least effective means of increasing cotton farming revenue and reducing poverty, hence the wasteful allocation of resources. It has also been well-documented. Investment in agriculture has to move from subsidy to demand-driven research and problem-solving, create incubators for the commercialization of subsistence farming, and develop rural infrastructure that links rural and urban economies. The development of the rural education network by farming-based institutions may assist bridge a knowledge gap, increase production of rural communities, and improve efficiency. These methods will not only decrease the reliance on obsolete extension and imported technologies but help to add value by enhancing the value chains of the Cotton agricultural sector. The government of many other developing countries give subsidies to their farmers to reduce their farmin related issues such as Bangladesh and India.