AgDevCo expands portfolio in Mozambique with new investment
in file CoM
The Mozambican Cotton Institute expects an 8.6% fall in raw cotton production in Mozambique this year, according to a forecast consulted by Lusa.
According to the latest figures from the country’s National Statistics Institute (INE), cotton in 2017 ranked 14th in terms of Mozambique’s main exports, totalling US$9.1 million.
The 2018/19 campaign will see fewer producers and a smaller area: 100,000 hectares compared to 180,835 in the previous growing season, with 170,000 farmers in the field against 228,133 last year.
The 8.6% decline is expected both in the production of seed cotton (from 65,653 to 60,000 tons) and of cotton already in fibre (from 24,948 tons to 22,800).
The figures are less than half of those recorded for the 2011/12 growing season, the best crop of the last decade, when seed cotton production reached 184,141 tons and cotton fibre reached 69,974 tons.
According to the director general of the Cotton Institute of Mozambique, Luís Tomo, climate change is mostly to blame.
“We know that one of the biggest challenges is climate change, with temperature increases and changes in the rainfall regime,” he said in a statement from the Institute addressing the opening of the harvest and marketing season scheduled for June 14.
Climate change “modifies the disease scenario and its management, as well as the timing of the sowing season, negatively affecting productivity, production and fibre quality.”
“The year 2019 offers us several challenges, namely improving the quality of the seed and the quality of the fibre, increasing productivity and modernising production,” Tomo concludes.
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