India should brand its cotton to be competitive in world

NAGPUR: Keshav Kranthi, head technical information section of International

Cotton

Advisory Committee (

ICAC

), Washington DC, here on Friday stressed that it is high time that India brands its cotton in the international market to be able to be competitive in the international market. India’s ‘desi’ cotton is in demand in the international market and India should take advantage of this fact and

brand

itself.

Kranthi told TOI that India’s image was unnecessarily being maligned internationally. It was true that India needed to improve the quality of the cotton cultivated but that did not mean that Indian cotton was bad.

“Unless India uses its strengths like good fibre quality and fibre strength of its desi cotton varieties and brands itself as ‘Indian cotton’ it will not be able to sell itself in the international market at a status it deserves,” said Kranthi. Almost 62% of the organic cotton comes from India and yet India’s cotton is looked down upon, he added.

The former director of the Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR) Kranthi said that India needs to work on the issue of traceability of its cotton. “It should be possible to trace back the source of cotton’s origin. This requires labelling the cotton or bar coding it. Traceability speaks for the integrity of the cotton producer,” said Kranthi.

Stressing on the need for increasing the yield and mechanization Kranthi said that India could do well even if it doubles its productivity. It may need to touch the production levels of countries like Australia which is the highest producer of cotton. The high density transplantation system (HDPS) which increases the density of plants per unit area is one of the best solutions for increasing the productivity. Of course mechanization can act as an added tool in improving quality of cotton.

Asian countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, China and India are the highest consumers of cotton in the world. These countries should work in tandem and stand united for improving the sustainability of the cotton in world market.

However the truth remains that a lot of science needs to be done to meet the challenges of climate change. India needs to also stand for itself, have a voice of its own to be able to compete in global market. ‘India has relatively less cost of production compared to developed countries. They can have input incentives to increase the yield, “ said Kranthi.

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