Concerted effort takes cotton from strength to strength
To what do you attribute the local cotton industry’s recent success?
It has been a combination of factors. Cotton’s profitability has improved compared with that of competing crops, and confidence in the industry has been rebuilt due to the introduction of the Cotton Cluster Programme (CCP) in 2014. Improved technologies in seed variety development and harvesting equipment have also facilitated growth.
Over the past decade, the area planted to cotton has increased more than 40 000ha, or 68%. While the weighted average yield for irrigated and dryland cotton was slightly lower in 2018/2019 than 10 years ago, the number of dryland hectares increased, and
