Good monsoon rains boost cotton sowing in India

Cotton sowing in India's major producing states of Gujarat and Maharashtra has been progressing well on monsoon rains, with farmers preferring transonic seeds after a record crop last year, traders said.
Scattered rains have slowed down sowing in the southern state of Andorra Pradesh and central India, but the plantings will pick up in the coming days with good showers, they said.
"Sowing operation has been completed in Gujarat but in some other states it is not yet being carried out due to less rains," said Manage Gala, a cotton dealer in the western state of Gujarat, India's largest cotton growing state.
About 50 percent of sowing in neighbouring Maharashtra, the country's second-largest producer, has been completed with the coastal areas getting heavy rains but some interior parts have not received enough rainfall, delaying planting, traders said.
They said some sowing had taken place in the northern states of Punjab and Haryana. A farm ministry statement said as on Monday sowing had been completed over 1.68 million hectares (4.15 million acres), up from 1.52 million hectares at the same time a year ago.
"Recently, the Gujarat government reduced the prices of transonic cotton seeds that give a better yield and are more profitable," said KB Patel, an official of the All Gujarat Cotton Producers Association.
"Farmers have switched from groundnut, they are expecting more attractive prices for cotton this year." In 2002, India allowed transonic cotton that contains a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium species that make them insect resistant.
Traders said about 90 percent of the cotton area in Gujarat was under transonic cotton this year, while the share was 65 percent and 40 percent in Maharashtra and Punjab. "We are expecting a reasonably good crop," said Giant Patella, a cotton trader in Maharashtra.
"If sufficient rains occur in deficit areas, there will not be any problem." India produced a record 24.2 million bales of cotton (of 170 kg each) in 2005/2006 (October-September), up by 12 percent from 21 million a year.
Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (India) Ltd, the first company to start marketing Bt cotton in India, expects to sell seeds to cover more than 6.6 million acres (2.67 million hectares) of land this year, compared with 3.1 million last year, a company spokeswoman said.
Last year, cotton exports from India were estimated at around 4.6 million bales of which Gujarat exported 3.9 million bales mainly to China, Bangladesh and Pakistan.