The cotton acreage in the country is likely to see a decline of about 15 per cent, with farmers shifting to oilseeds and pulses cultivation in several parts of the country.

Though it had expected to top last year’s area of 129 lakh hectares, the cottonseed industry now says it will be lower. “We are hoping to close the season with about 4.20-4.30 crore packets (of 450 gm each) this year as against the average sales of 5-5.5 crore packets,” a seed industry executive has said.

M Prabhakara Rao, President of the National Seed Association of India (NSAI), told BusinessLine that the shift from cotton happened due to low yields and the damages caused due to pink bollworm attack. “These two factors had resulted in low prices discouraging farmers to move away from cotton,” he said.

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“Besides, alternative crops such as soyabean, chillies and groundnut have fetched higher prices,” Prabhakara Rao, who is also the Managing Director of Nuziveedu Seeds, said.

“A good number of farmers got very low yields. Some of them got only 3-4 quintals. This might have forced the farmers to look at alternatives like maize and redgram,” S Malla Reddy, Vice-President of All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), said.

The cotton acreage last year stood at about 130 lakh hectares last year as against 134 lakh hectares in the previous year.