Growing cotton output earns $1.5bn profit

LAHORE: Cotton plays a key role in driving the country's economy. Due to the efforts of the Agriculture Department, Punjab and the cotton growers, the area under cotton cultivation increased by 20-25% last year and the total production increased by 3 million bales, which provided the country a benefit of 1.5 billion dollars.

This was stated by Secretary Agriculture, Punjab Iftikhar Ali Sahoo while presiding over a meeting at Agriculture House on Monday to finalise the action plan related to cotton cultivation.

Sahoo added that the officers and field staff of the Agriculture Department should perform their duties with full enthusiasm to ensure the achievement of high production of cotton this year.

All additional duties of the field staff of Agriculture Department are being eliminated so that the field staff could be available for the technical guidance of the cotton farmers in the next four to five months.

Secretary agriculture appointed Consultant Agriculture Department Dr M Anjum Ali as focal person of ‘Cotton Campaign 2024’. He said that during the cotton campaign, regular weekly meetings will be held preferably in the divisions of cotton cultivation.

He said that Punjab got recognition because of cotton during last year and the department got a good name. He also informed that divisional and provincial committees have been formed to promote cotton cultivation. He also directed to take the private sector on board to conduct mega farmer gathering for the awareness of cotton farmers.

Among others, Additional Secretary Agriculture (Admin) Punjab Ijaz Munir, DG Agriculture (Extension) Punjab Dr Ishtiaq Hasan, Consultant Agriculture Department Dr M Anjum Ali, Director Agriculture (Extension) Headquarters Farooq Javed and Director Agricultural Information Punjab Naveed Asmat Kahlon participated in the meeting.