4 - 10 January 2001
Issue No.515
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 4 - 10 January 2001 Issue No.515 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Cotton revisited
ONCE Egypt's main crop, the dethroned king cotton will be getting more attention from the government during the next cultivation season. Youssef Wali, minister of agriculture and land reclamation has announced a plan to encourage expansion in cotton cultivation through sharing with peasants, who are committed to cultivate their crops early in the season. The peasants would bear part of the cultivation cost. The government currently contributes around LE176 per feddan to the cultivation costs, in addition to an LE100 contribution to combat cotton pests. The government will also retain its last season's, 1999-2000, delivery prices which ranged between LE390 and LE490 per qantar.
The area cultivated with cotton during the last season was only 520,000 feddans, Egypt's lowest in 50 years. In contrast, during the 1950-51 season the area planted with cotton was 1.97 million feddans, 21 per cent of Egypt's total cultivated area. In the past few years it dropped to as low as five per cent of all the arable land in Egypt.
Wali also pointed out that the area cultivated with the premium quality Giza 70 and the extra-long staple cotton Giza 88, which are the best categories and represent the bulk of Egyptian cotton exports, will increase from the current 99,000 to 115,000 feddans. The government's plan aims at encouraging cotton farmers to expand cotton cultivation to make up for last year's reduction of the prices of exported cotton to come in line with the price of the American pima cotton, the main competitor to the Egyptian long- staple variety.
The US has succeeded during recent years in increasing its production of extra long-staple varieties by more than 40 per cent by increasing the cultivated area and raising productivity rates. This has raised the US stake of world production of the extra long-staple varieties to 25 per cent.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
