Agro production in Zambia is recording tremendous progress across most key food and cash crops. One such cash crop is cotton with yields expected to expand by about 20%. If such growth rates of over 20% are sustained over the next five years, it would spur the eventual re-development of the textile and apparel secondary industry in Zambia.
The Cotton Board of Zambia has disclosed that the production of cotton is expected to increase from 55,000 metric tonnes to 66,000 metric tonnes for the 2020/2021 farming season due to the increase in the planted area.
Board Executive Director Sunduzwayo Banda said there is more planted area this year compared to the previous year, which technically means there will be an increase in the tonnes to be harvested.
According to information made available to the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Banda said there are currently 286,000 farmers across the country who are growing cotton, noting that the buying price for cotton this year which has increased to K7.5 per kg.
The Cotton Board of Zambia said there was an increase in production in the 2019/2020 farming season, which was because of the buying price, which was higher than the previous year.
Banda mentioned that the highest buying price, which was K4.2 per Kg for the 2019/2020 farming season encouraged more farmers to grow the crop and more were expected to venture into cotton growing because of the pricing, which has gone up this year.
He however said that the production could have been more but that some challenges such as the adverse weather conditions in some cotton growing areas some of which were flooded which led to fields been abandoned and a pest attack in the valleys of Sinazongwe, in Southern Province also caused low production in the 2019/2020 farming season.
“So the pest damage caused a loss in terms of what we were expecting, however we also have competitor crops like soya beans which were offering higher prices than what we were offering, so that also contributed to the key challenges in terms of production, he said.”
He also mentioned that the association is working on re-arranging the marketing strategy in order to have a more organised market, quality control in terms of inputs and improvements on the seed quality and the integrated pest management in handling pests in an effort to try to fully revive the sector.
Banda said Zambia had about 225,000 cotton farmers and this farmers are mostly based in the Northern, Muchinga, Eastern, Southern, Central and Lusaka provinces last year which has now increased to 286, 000 this year.
“We are not on the Copperbelt, Western, North-Western and parts of the Northern province due to the soil conditions and climatic requirements of the crop. Cotton needs 600-800 mm of rainfall, anything higher or lower than that, it will not grow properly. It also needs a temperature between 21 and 31 degrees centigrade, so those areas have temperatures as low as 11 and 12, others as high as 39 and 40 degrees, so the crop does not do well in such areas.
