Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu today called upon all stakeholders to make concerted efforts to improve cotton yield and productivity in India to enhance farmers’ incomes.

Expressing his concern over the low yield of Indian cotton compared to other major cotton growers in the world, Naidu said that steps must be taken to guide the farmers through better research and by adopting best practices.

He called for increasing the global competitiveness of Indian cotton textiles and to “capitalize on our traditional strengths, shift to modern agronomic practices and consolidate our position as a global leader in the cotton industry.”

Noting the importance of the textiles sector as the second-largest employer in the country after agriculture, Naidu emphasized on improving farm productivity, increasing mechanization, upskilling textile workers, and hand-holding small firms to give a boost to the sector.

Naidu also suggested diversifying into specialty cottons such as the extra-long staple (ELS) cotton and organic cotton.

Naidu expressed his concern over that despite being the largest cotton producer (23 per cent) in the world and having the highest area under cotton cultivation (39 per cent of world area), the yield per hectare in India remained at a low of 460 kg lint per hectare when compared to the world average of 800 kg lint per hectare.

To address this, he called for improving the planting density, taking up mechanization of cotton harvest and giving a thrust to agronomy research.

The Vice President was inaugurating the CITI-CDRA Golden Jubilee Celebrations from Vigyan Bhawan. The Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) is a leading industry chamber of the textile sector in India and the Cotton Development and Research Association (CDRA) is its extension arm.

Textiles, Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs and Food & Public Distribution Minister Piyush Goyal was present at the ceremony.

Others present included: T. Rajkumar, Chairman, CITI; P. D. Patodia, Chairman, Standing Committee on Cotton of CITI-CDRA; Rakesh Mehra, Deputy Chairman, CITI; Upendra Prasad Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles; and Prem Malik, Co-Chairman, Standing Committee on Cotton of CITI CDRA.