DUSHANBE, September 7, 2009, Asia-Plus — This year, a mass cotton-harvesting campaign is expected to start in Tajikistan after the month of Ramadan, Saidmurod Bahriddinov, the head of the crop production department within the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
This year, the Islamic holy month of Ramadan ends on September 20.
According to him, cotton crop maturity is nearly one month behind the schedule this year because of bad weather conditions. Moreover, torrential rain has demolished thousands of hectares of areas under cotton this year.
Although some districts in the southern Khatlon province started the cotton-harvesting campaign in mid-August already, the ministry has not yet received common data about cotton produced to this date. “We have not yet received information about the volumes of cotton produced in the country so far because under government’s resolution # 111 farmers are granted full independence and we do not have the right to demand cotton data from them, you know,” Bahriddinov said.
In the meantime, the deputy head of the Khatlon agriculture directorate Mahmadsaid Zuhurov says the cotton-harvesting campaign is currently progressing only in the southern districts of the province, while some cotton-growing districts in Khatlon have not yet started the cotton-harvesting campaign.
In the northern Sughd province, only farmers in the Konibodom district have begun gathering cotton so far.
We will recall that 200,700 hectares of lands have been allotted this year for growing cotton while farmers have planted cotton only on 170,400 hectares.
Last year, farmers planted cotton on some 238,000 hectares of lands and yielded more than 353,000 tons of cotton, while last year’s national target was determined at 553,000 hectares. Specialists expect farmers to yield some 400,000 hectares of raw cotton this year.
