Cotton is a profitable business and Ugandans should not be dubed to abandon
cotton production. As long as people demand clothes, cotton is a lucrative
business. And, conventional farming method should be preferred over farming
methods people have little knowledge of. There are lots of GMO seeds going
around that are designed to kill off natural seeds for crops, so that farmers
can rely only on manufactured, genetically modified seeds. This cause
dependency on industries that manufacture such seeds! Imagine if every planting
season you have to buy your seed from a manufacturing company in America or
Europe because the crop you produce grow up seedless! There is need for us to
protect our crops.
Ocii
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Govt body killing cotton growing in the country
Refer to the recent articles in the press between October 7 and 13, 2008
quoting the Cotton Development Organisation (CDO), that organic cotton is not a
profitable undertaking and therefore farmers in Lango and Acholi should abandon
it.
In the last five years, the government created a CDO department to promote
cotton production in the country and approved budget of Shs5b a year to do this
work. For six years, I have been training small holder farmers in the cotton
sector and other enterprises in Acholi and Lango regions.
According to CDO, a conventional farmer gets 1,000kgs per acre. I agree that
good cotton farmers can yield 1,000kgs an acre. But this results from many
factors not only synthetic chemicals as CDO says.
Take note that if a farmer ignores other factors like timely land selecting and
preparation, timely seed delivery, planting, good spacing, thinning, weeding
and spraying, whether using organic or synthetic chemicals a farmer will get
zero kilograms in an acre. So the yields factor is not only spraying with
synthetic chemicals. Last year, CDO delivered seeds with poor germination
ability of less than 40 per cent.
In such a situation, can you expect a farmer to perform miracles to get 1000kgs
an acre? Secondly, this year most areas in Acholi and Lango received cotton
seeds late in July and what miracle is there to make a farmer get 1000kgs acre
when he planted late due to late delivery of seeds?
On October 7, it was reported in the press that cotton production had declined
from 476,000 bales in 1969 to 60,000 bales by 2007. Who is responsible for this
decline? Organic or conventional cotton? Organic cotton is only one and a half
years now in Acholi. So what happened to conventional cotton grown in Masindi,
Kasese, Kazinga Channel, Eastern region etc? Does Dunavant operate in these
areas too? You will discover that the downward trend in the cotton production
has taken about 20 years. Was there organic cotton all that time?
The President is on a tour to check on the progress of “Prosperity for all”
programme in the whole country. I wonder what he will see in the cotton sector
in Lango after farmers have abandoned cotton growing due to CDO chasing and
interfering with operations of the ginners.
The CDO doesn’t have a single extension staff known to cotton farmers. The CDO
should admit responsibility for the collapse of the cotton sector in Lango
instead of blaming ginners. Cotton can still be a profitable venture when
managed properly.
T.K.Otim
Kitgum
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