DUSHANBE, February 13, 2009, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan has stocked enough cotton seeds for the upcoming sowing campaign, Sulton Davlatov, the head of the seed farming department within the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
According to him, they have stocked already 24,000 tons of cotton seeds to this date, while this year’s target has been determined at 25,000 tons of cotton seeds.
The Khatlon province has stocked 14,000 tons of cotton seeds, the Sughd province – 6,298 tons and districts subordinate to the center (RRPs) – 2.500 tons. As usual, the cotton-sowing campaign will be start at the end of March, Davlatov said.
This year, cotton is expected to be grown on some 200,000-202,000 hectares, while last year, Tajik farmers planted cotton on 237,000 hectares. Specialists attribute reduction in areas under cotton to low cotton productivity that were reported in the country last year.
In 2008, Tajikistan produced 353,000 tons of raw cotton, which was little more than 65 percent of the national cotton target. An average crop capacity was only some 1.49 tons of cotton per hectare.
In this connection, Tajikistan has decided to abandon the practice of forcing unproductive farms to grow cotton in order to fulfill government quotas.
We will recall that speaking at a press conference in Dushanbe on January 22, Agriculture Minister Qosim Qosimov said the government would help farmers make the change from cotton to other crops more suitable to their circumstances. The minister said farms producing less than 2.5 tons of cotton per hectare should not be compelled to grow it. “The ministry will not insist that they should grow cotton,” he said.
