Central Asia is one of the most important cotton-growing regions in the world. Cotton cultivation has contributed significantly to the scarcity of water resources. The associated change in the landscape structure impacting ecosystems, human health and socio-economic conditions. Counteracting these developments requires alternative and reliable land management systems. However, the challenges cannot be addressed only through alternative forms of site-adapted and sustainable land use – they must also consider the subsequent added value, particularly in rural regions. Therefore, international teams from Germany and Central Asia have worked together with local stakeholders to develop exemplary solutions to these challenges, including the cultivation, processing and use of bast fibre crops as alternatives or supplements to cotton in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. For linseed, options for harvesting the biomass and processing it into valuable industrial raw materials for the domestic economy have been developed. In addition, fibre hemp and Apocynum have the potential to contribute to the recultivation of fallow land, and high-quality bast fibres can be produced from both plants. Both crops are attracting growing interest from processing companies that are becoming increasingly established in the region.
Tag: cotton
Economic Performance of Cotton and Fruit Plantations in arid Regions: Observation from the Tarim River Basin, NW China
Arid lands cover 17% of the world’s land. There, crop production largely depends on irrigation and frequently faces water shortages. Cotton is grown in arid lands, e.g. Central Asia and Northwest China. Today, the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang, China has turned into the world’s most important cotton production region with an annual cotton lint production of 2.1 million t (8.85% of the world production). Against the background of water shortages, cotton farmers in parts of the Tarim Basin have shifted to more highly valuable fruit production, especially Zyzyphus jujube (Chinese Date) and the so-called Korla Fragrant Pear (Pyrus bretschneideri Rdhd.).This paper thus aims at assessing the costs, revenues, and profits as well as the return to land and the return to family labor obtained by farmers from those three crops in the Tarim Basin. Data were gathered through farm interviews.Seed cotton yield was 4482 kg/ha in average, with 6155 kg/ha attained by farms under the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). XPCC, family farms, and commercial farms attained profits of 16846 CNY/ha, 1480 CNY/ha, and 3165 CNY/ha, respectively. Profits from Chinese Date were 53255 CNY/ha and 64279 CNY/ha for family farms and commercial farms, respectively. Among the cotton farm types, the XPCC have the highest profits and return to land. This largely can be explained by the high seed cotton yields of the XPCC farms. Though the XPCC farms are operated by single families, they belong to a strict organization, the XPCC, which urges the families to plant cotton, but provides extension services, too.Chinese Date has become an attractive alternative for small family farms.The value of this study lies in the primary data, household interviews, used. This especially applies for commercial farms which are located outside villages and their statistics.
Human health and occupational exposure to pesticides among smallholder farmers in cotton zones of Côte d’Ivoire
While precautionary efforts are being made to minimize human health problems associated with agricultural pesticides, the continued occurrence of occupational poisoning from these chemicals raises major concerns among stakeholders. Information gap on human health problems associated with pesticides poses major obstacles to making informed policy decisions, particularly in developing countries where most of the poisonings occurs. In this study, we identified acute human health symptoms associated with pesticide use in cotton zone of Côte d’Ivoire and, documented the response of rural households to the symptoms. The results show that cotton farmers in Cote d’Ivoire suffer from different occupational health hazards from exposure to agricultural pesticides. Key health symptoms reported by pesticide applicators are headache, rheum, cough, skin rash and sneezing. Pesticide applicators reported four times higher symptoms of ill health than other household members who do not normally handle pesticides. Although, households recognized pesticides as an important cause of ill health, some of the symptoms have been accepted as norm by individuals who apply pesticides. Official data on pesticide poisoning in the country is most likely to be seriously under-estimated as applicators visited formal health centers for medical assistance in only 2% of poisoning cases reported. There is a high likelihood that households in the study area under-estimated pesticide-related health costs in making farm production decision-making. Approaches to use economic instruments for reliable monitoring and reporting procedures to formulate appropriate policies and regulations to minimize exposure to pesticides are recommended. Health planners and policy makers should aim at reducing the risks posed by pesticide to farm households by, improving awareness of farmers; promote complementary approach (e.g. Integrated Pest Management) and, use of economic instruments and improved surveillance to bridge the gap in the documentation of pesticide poisoning cases among farmers.
Will cotton make a comeback in Mali?
With the decline of cotton especially in the marginal cotton areas, farmers have been using more of the cotton-financed inputs on the cereals. The cotton para-statal company (CMDT) has made a virtue out of this recommending diversification for these regions. Following the world price spike in 2010, the Malian government responded with a substantial price increase for cotton in 2011 of 38% to rejuvenate the Malian sector. This article looks at the impact of this price policy in the cotton economy and the potential of new cereal technology and marketing strategy to raise incomes and facilitate the diversification. Given the importance of the marketing decision of selling later after the recovery of cereal prices from the harvest collapse, a discrete stochastic programming model was developed for three-stage decision making. Then, the recent changes in the cotton economy and government fertilizer subsidies were analyzed along with the introduction of the new technology marketing of sorghum. Cotton and maize continue to dominate the economy but the combined sorghum technology marketing increases farmers’ incomes by 16% to 21% and eases the return to normal cotton prices, after the 2011 price spike, as well as the removal of the fertilizer subsidies.
Contract farming and informality: drivers and governance responses in Zambia and Zimbabwe
Cotton production in Zambia and Zimbabwe plays a key role in the countries’ agricultural sector and in the lives of millions of farmers who depend on it as a cash crop. Yet, in both countries, cotton production is at one of its lowest levels in recent years. One dominant cause for declining production is informal trading, manifested in side-trading, that circumvents the dominant institutional model of contract farming.
Through a three-year research collaboration between IAPRI (Indaba Agricultural Policy and Research Institute), AEPRIC (Agricultural Economics, Policy Research and Information Centre) and IIED, we examined the informal cotton trade and its impacts on the economic, social and environmental performance of the cotton sectors in Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Our findings illustrate the drivers and consequences of side-trading, including the short term positive impacts on livelihoods and longer term negative impacts of declining crop quality, yields and soil fertility. We show that regulatory frameworks around contract farming have struggled to deal with growing market competition, over-capacity and side-trading. At the same time, farmers are becoming increasingly distrustful of sector institutions and ginning companies. We conclude by presenting two options for institutional reform which would reverse this trend, minimise informality and bring the cotton sector back from the verge of collapse.