COTTON FARMING

Cotton, the most important fibre crop of India plays a dominant role in its agrarian and industrial economy. It is the backbone of our textile industry, accounting for 70% of total fibre consumption in textile sector, and 38% of the country's export, fetching over Rs. 42,000 crores. Area under cotton cultivation in India (8.9 million ha) is the highest in the world, i.e., 25% of the world area and employs seven million people for their living.
Cotton productivity in India is quite low as compared to world standards. The modern cotton production technology relies heavily on the use of fertilisers and on chemicals to control insect pests, diseases, weeds and growth regulators. Cotton cultivated on 5% cultivable land consumes 54% of total pesticides used in Indian agriculture, and in some pockets, the rates are higher than this, leaving immense ecological and human hazards as reported by World Health Organisation. Use of chemicals at such scale causes a lot of hazards to man, i.e., environmental pollution, soil health, and agro-ecology and poor profitability in cotton farming. This has basically prompted the demand of organically cultivated, eco-friendly or ‘green’ cotton.
The preamble of organic farming has been aimed at conservation and optimised utilisation of all natural resources for a reasonable profitability under the guiding factors of sustainability of the farm. In order to keep a certain threshold of profit from the farms, all the farming practices have to be redesigned to undo the ill-effects that have crept in the current agricultural scenario while attempting to increase cotton production in the prevalent cropping systems. A sense of balancing act to moderate the resource utilisation with anticipation for suspected damage to mother earth is the essence of organic farming. The organic protocols of farming could accentuate and aid in imparting improved momentum to the bio-dynamism of crop fields. Lesser stable and poor bio-dynamism that has caused less-productive farms has alerted farmers on the question of long-term sustainance.
At the end of this decade, it is quite satisfying to find that the above thoughts paved the way for increased adoption of non-chemical farming options. The happy marriage of conventional wisdom and rationalised modern agricultural technology has instilled sense optimism and hope to growers, especially in rain grown crops. The balancing act seems to be quite deft, but could have considerable impact on developing a better cause of modern Indian agriculture.
Five to seven decades ago, most of the cotton cultivated in the country was ‘eco-friendly’ with little or no use of toxic chemicals in its production. Even today, there are many pockets in India, where it is produced without the use of agrochemicals, e.g., areas growing Wagad cotton in Gujarat, Y-1 desi cotton of Khandesh region of Maharashtra, Maljari in Madhya Pradesh, part of areas growing Jayadhar and Suyodhar in Karnataka, Nandicum in Andhra Pradesh and parts of cotton areas in north eastern hill region.