Senate body for introducing high yielding beneficial varities of cotton
By Fakhar Alam

ISLAMABAD—The Senate Standing Committee on Food, Agriculture & Livestock on Monday called for stringent measures to prevent adulteration in pesticides and greater out reach of agricultural extension-services to salvage the country’s premier export.
The Senate Standing Committee on Food, Agriculture & Livestock, which met at the Parliament House Monday under the Chairmanship of Senator Muhammad Amjad Abbas, has made a passionate plea for use of standardized / certified variety of seeds only for cotton production and called for strict check on proliferation of unapproved and sub-standard varieties, (by breaking the breeder-distributor nexus) which are literally playing havoc with the yields. The Committee also called for stringent measures to prevent adulteration in pesticides and greater out reach of agricultural extension-services to salvage the country’s premier export.
The Committee, taking note of growing global and regional competition in cotton, observed that the on-going research must benefit the end user i.e. the farmer and the Ministry of Food & Agriculture, its subsidiaries as well as the provincial governments should focus on facilitating the farmer, who holds the key to any agricultural turn around.
The training, education and awareness of the farmers be accorded the priority it deserves, said the Committee members.
They demanded an aggressive but focused media campaign to enlighten the farmer in choosing the right kind of seed and balanced use of fertilizer, pesticide etc for various areas.
They expressed their surprise over the fact that high yielding varieties, which have been developed with use of millions of rupees, are not being utilized by bulk of farmers partially due to ignorance and partially due to unavailability in the cotton growing areas. The Committee also urged the textile industry to strive for changing its behavior and try to facilitate the farmer adding that if the farmer produce quality cotton, the mill owners should also give a better price to the farmers so that there exist some incentive to produce quality cotton, which can fetch a better price locally as well as internationally, otherwise it apprehends “a sugar like situation may hit cotton too”.
It called for early adoption of the redrafted ‘Cotton Control Act’ by the National Assembly, which would cover all issues relating to cotton and textile. The Committee directed the ministry and the research organization under its control to expedite efforts for fighting and addressing CLV Virus and Mealy-Bug problems in cotton and to ultimately meet the 2015 target of 20.70 million bales.
Earlier, the Committee was given a presentation by the Ministry on various varieties of Cotton with resistibility / productivity first developed and then cultivated during the last ten years alongwith the name of the institutions research centers, both at Federal & Provincial levels, which developed the same and research methodologies developed by the research organizations both at Federal & Provincial levels separately during the last ten years against CLV Virus and mealy-bug problems.