Cotton farming suffers due to High Labour cost

The traditional cotton farmer in Tamil Nadu today is hamstrung on two counts - competing industrial development that has rendered his farm labour costly and competing with the industrial crop of maize which has also of late buoyed the price expectation of the growers.

Tamil Nadu accounts for a third of country's 37 million spindled-spinning capacity, consuming a fourth of its 270 lakh bales of cotton as raw material. But the paradox of the State's cotton textile industry is that 90 per cent of these cotton comes from outside Tamil Nadu. Despite rising cotton consumption by the industry here year after year, the locally produced cotton volume in the State is stuck for the last two decades at 5-6 lakh bales, the same as it used to be in 1990s. The high consumption with a far-too-low indigenus output has been the `cliched' cotton statement of the State.

Why the state's cotton output continues to remain low in reverse proportion to the growth in consumption requirements? The cotton farmer's reply will invariably be on the high labour costs triggering higher production costs. The next deterrent factor is the low price the crop fetches at the end of the 120-days wait. "Ten years ago, I engaged a farm hand to pluck cotton at Rs15 per day when my crop fetched me Rs 1,500 a quintal. Today the same crop gets me a price of Rs 2,500 per quintal when I had to spend Rs 150-160 per day per worker engaged in cotton harvesting. While the farm labour cost rose by 10 times, the same can't be said of cotton price. I want to know who fixes the price for my cotton", asked Mr Velusamy, the farmer from Avinashi, who has brought down his cotton exposure to hardly three acres now.

Consecutive losses incurred in cotton apart, Mr Velusamy's woes have worsened with rapid industrialisation in his very neighbourhood Tirupur. Hardly 20-km from his village in Avinashi, where the growth of knitwear industry precipitated migration of a large chunk of farm labour to take up jobs in factories that give a higher wages compared to the agriculture, besides the cool comforts of working place.

The traditional cotton farmer in Tamil Nadu today is hamstrung on two counts - competing industrial development that has rendered his farm labour costly and competing with the industrial crop of maize which has also of late buoyed the price expectation of the growers because of the vast number of maize consuming poultry feed centres that have taken strong roots in their close vicinity itself. This scenario is expected to fuel a collective thinking among cotton growers and cotton consuming industry in Tamil Nadu on lowering production costs, especially through mechanising the cotton farming.`Unlike crops like paddy or maize, mechanised harvesting in cotton would pose practical constraints, unless new gene types of plants are evolved to suit mechanised plucking/harvesting.

The existing cotton crop varieties are hybrids with branches being tall/robust and are not easily amenable to mechanical plucking due to various stages of boll maturity. Hence, the need to evolve a new plant architecture suitable for engaging mechanised harvesting', feels Dr K. Koodalingam, a plant breeder and cotton scientist from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University He feels dwarf cotton plants with minimum fruiting (symbodial) branches and having spaces between plants at 73 cm instead of the present five or three feet spacing could be tried so that the less number of fruiting (boll formation) could be compensated by having more plants per hectare (at 15,000 or 20,000 plants per acre instead of the 4,000/5,000). This would make up yield and also facilitate useage of mechanised boll strippers, suckers or shakers for harvesting the burst cotton bolls.

Related Posts by Categories

agriculture

• Price of coriander may go up
• New ways of marketing !!
• Community radio, agritech portal launched at TNAU
• Agricultural varsities must focus on tackling crop diseases
• TNAU awaits approval for four varieties of Bt brinjal
• Kovai Flower show during Jan !
• TNAU demonstrate Sugarcane harvest machine ...
• India has become the hub of biotechnology
• Kisan Mela at Sugarcane Breeding Institute
• ACCOSA meet on 20th !
• Farmers reluctant to invest in drip irrigation’
• Planters wary over labour shortage, rising cost !
• TNAU entered MoU with BPCL !
• Scientific Workers Conference @ TNAU
• Training In Preparing Chocolate & Confectionery Products
• Training on Milk products !
• Monsanto organises ‘Aruvadai Thiruvizha’
• MoU signed to commercialise TNAU’s power weeder
• Free training in goat farming
• Agri Intex from Oct 2nd !
• TNAU recommends rice variety
• Cut flower auction started !
• New V.C assumes office @TNAU
• Auction centre for roses !!
• KMP asks CM to lift ban on toddy ...