Michael Pollak wrote: > > Maybe not. It's perfectly possible that some crops are better > industrialized and some not. Or it's possible that all are better > industrialized. I'd just like to see some reliable figures and causal > explanations of why this is so. > > But just to take your first example of cotton, are we sure cotton really > is an exception? Our man Roger Thurow at the Wall Street Journal (who > seems to be working Mali beat) wrote an article that was posted to Pen-l a > month ago that seems to suggest the opposite:
You could be right about cotton production in Mali. My point is not about cotton production for exports. My point was about textile industry: yarn, cloth, garments etc. For countries like China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka etc., textiles are an important item in exports. China's textile exports are about $50 bn (I don't have precise number), India's exports of textlies are about $10 bn etc. Indian exports will not be able to compete with other nations' textile exports, if Indian textile industry is globally not competitive. The same is true of other nations as well. One important component of cost structure of textile industry is cotton cost. One method of cutting cost is by improving yields on cotton farms. The quality of cotton also influences sales price and profitabiity. This factor is putting presssure on textile exporting nations to make changes in cotton farming. e.g. introduction of GM cotton. If Indian cotton farms are only half as productive as Chinese farms, Indian textile exports would not competitive. This pressure will grow, since textile trade is going to free from 2005. Ulhas
