Urges for steps to be taken to guide the farmers through better research and by adopting best practices
The Vice President, M Venkaiah Naidu called upon all stakeholders to make concerted efforts to improve cotton yield and productivity in India to enhance farmers’ incomes. Expressing his concern over the low yield of Indian cotton compared to other major cotton growers in the world, Naidu said that steps must be taken to guide the farmers through better research and by adopting best practices.
Naidu called for increasing the global competitiveness of Indian cotton textiles and “capitalise on our traditional strengths, shift to modern agronomic practices and consolidate our position as a global leader in the cotton industry.”
Noting the importance of the textiles sector as the second-largest employer in the country after agriculture, Naidu emphasised improving farm productivity, increasing mechanisation, upskilling textile workers, and hand-holding small firms to give a boost to the sector. Naidu also suggested diversifying into speciality cotton such as the extra-long staple (ELS) cotton and organic cotton.
The Vice President was inaugurating the CITI-CDRA Golden Jubilee Celebrations from Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) is a leading industry chamber of the textile sector in India and the Cotton Development and Research Association (CDRA) is the extension arm of CITI, undertaking various seed development and extension activities in the cotton sector.
Shri Naidu expressed his concern that despite being the largest cotton producer (23 per cent) in the world and having the highest area under cotton cultivation (39 per cent of world area), the yield per hectare in India remained at a low of 460 kg lint per hectare when compared to the world average of 800 kg lint per hectare. To address this, he called for improving the planting density, taking up mechanisation of cotton harvest and giving a thrust to agronomy research.
He said, “We need to improve our seed technology, increase yield, adopt global best practices, produce clean and high-quality cotton and brand it better to improve the farmers’ income.”
The Vice President noted that while India has a strong global footprint in cotton yarn, it has to improve its competitiveness in fabrics and apparel. He called for hand-holding small firms and upskilling textile workers to give a fillip to the sector. He said government schemes such as the Amended – Technology Up-gradation Fund Scheme (A-TUFS) and SAMARTH (Scheme for Capacity Building in the Textile Sector) are aimed at achieving these objectives.
On this occasion, Shri Naidu conferred awards to excelling cotton scientists and farmers in CITI-CDRA Project Areas. He also released a Coffee Table Book – ‘Millennial Shades of Cotton’ at the event.
Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Textiles, Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs and Food & Public Distribution, T Rajkumar, Chairman, CITI, PD Patodia, Chairman, Standing Committee on Cotton of CITI-CDRA, Shri Rakesh Mehra, Deputy Chairman, CITI, Upendra Prasad Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, Prem Malik, Co-Chairman, Standing Committee on Cotton of CITI CDRA and other dignitaries were present during the event.
