admin
month.
Pricing negotiations began earlier this year to avoid delays in the commencement of cotton sales due to price disagreements between farmers and contractors.
Chairman of the Cotton Marketing Technical Committee, which is spearheading the cotton pricing negotiations, Mr Berean Mukwende, revealed in Harare this week that the parties involved should be able to come up with a cotton lint price by the end of March.
The negotiations, which involve cotton farmers, ginners, oil expressers, the clothing and textiles industry and government, aim to produce a fair price that will benefit all stakeholders involved.
“We want to avoid the fights that have happened in the cotton industry over the past five years. We started early and we want to come up with a fair price to enable the proper marketing of cotton. We also have staff members who will constantly be monitoring developments on the international markets,” he said.
Ninety percent of the country’s cotton crop is grown under contract with ginners providing the inputs and buying the seed cotton at the end of the season.
Production that had reached a peak of 330 000 tonnes in 2004, dropped significantly due to challenges posed by farmers’ side marketing the crop in protest over poor prices offered by merchants and contractors.
To remedy the situation, the Government enacted Statutory Instrument 142 of 2010 that makes it an offence for farmers to side market their produce.
This season, the cotton industry expects to put more than 300 000 hectares of land under the white gold, a rise from last season’s 270 000.
This year’s global lint production was not adequate to keep pace with global consumption, largely due to inclement weather in some of the world’s top producing countries, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and China.
Cotton lint price recently surged from 78 cents per kilogramme last year to US$1,40 per kilogramme for the current year. The promulgation of Statutory Instrument 142 of 2010, which protects both cotton farmers and cotton buyers, through prohibiting side marketing has revived confidence in the sector.
As a result, contractors who had withdrawn from the sector in 2009 have since returned thereby increasing the number of supported farmers, which will ultimately translate into more land under cotton and more cotton yields too.
Online Reporter