What should be done to revitalise Zambia’s ailing cotton sector?

By Davis Mulenga

Indeed, as many businesses realise, the real gains come from low-cost production. That is the unifying feature of the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) collaboration with Zambian stakeholders to move the cotton sector to profitability.

After a recent visit by the inter-governmental cotton body, one of the only seven recognised by the United Nations, it released a report with key recommendations about what should be done to revitalise the local depressed cotton sector.

This would be the biggest and most ambitious initiative to embrace options of enhancing Zambia’s current productivity pegged at 800kg/ha, stagnated for more than four decades, by as much as 40%

It is early to be optimistic, yet neither ICAC Executive Director, Kai Hughes nor Head of Technical Information, Keshav Kranthi are deterred from firing all cylinders about the future of Zambia’s cotton sector.

Hughes and Kranthi recently undertook farm visits in Zambia as part of their research data collection and liaison with government and other players in the cotton value chain.

They both agree that local cotton producers, currently caught up in a dire situation, can transform to profitability in a relatively short time by tweaking a few things to their current farming practices.

“These are quick win solutions encompassing sustainable, affordable and easier to implement measures for cotton farmers of varying literacy levels. In essence the solutions harness the latest advances in cotton growing supported by technology.  Even more exciting, these solutions are implementable as early as the next farming season.

“The unique combination of better, affordable and quick solutions will result into improved yields. Correspondingly, incomes for farmers will rise and open up more opportunities for players across the value chain,” says Hughes.

Importance of cotton to Zambia’s economy

The importance of cotton production to the Zambian economy cannot be                    over-emphasised as it contributes to the economic growth of many developing countries. Though the continent was a small player in world production, raw cotton was among the top exports of a large number of African countries.

To illustrate, cotton sustain one of the world’s largest industries, the textiles, producing apparel, home furnishings, and medical supplies while its seed was widely used for food oil, animal feeds, and industrial materials. Further, its use extended to bioenergy.  

Therefore, the business stimulated by cotton is hundreds of billion dollars. In the Zambian context, the sector provides income for food security, education, health, housing and other needs for the majority of smallholder rural farmers. Yet, Zambia is yet to capture a significant share of the business.

Overall, the bulk of cotton production in Zambia was produced by an estimated 100,000 smallholder farmers who relied mainly on private ginners to finance inputs.

A persistent problem with the cotton production had been low-yields that had stubbornly stagnated between 30,000 – 50,000 metric tons per annum for decades.

According to ICAC, taking the two-pronged approach of technology deployment and optimisation of output per hectare would rapidly bring about substantial productivity in the sector.

Kranthi says the deployment of technology focuses on harnessing the latest cotton farming advances and putting them on the fingertips of the farmer via computer or mobile app.

He says the app, that included yield monitors for individual farmers and virtual-assisted farming support would help Zambian smallholder producers increase yields, reduce expenses and improve efficiency.

“This easier to use app by farmers possessing varying degrees of literacy from high to low will reinvent cotton farming without breaking the bank, thus increasing incomes and spawning more cotton by-product businesses.

“Indeed, smallholder farmers would be getting Internet benefits that had eluded them. One such benefit is speed to build better farming capabilities and access to a range of services, including markets,” he says.

Kranthi says the unifying feature of the app will help smallholder producers and ginners integrate, allowing them to improve to closely work jointly on crop quality and the like while improving their supply

Additionally, it will facilitate sharing of value-adding farming information between the farmer and experts – more of extension services on their finger-tips. The information will include supply and demand forecasts, weather predictions, inventory of inputs and monitoring reports.

He says given the high-customisation capabilities of the app, add-on features will be made to take better advantage of such benefits like faster time to market.

“The promise of the real benefits of the app rests on seamlessly integrating data flows and farming processes combined with resource planning and decision support systems such as disease diagnosis and treatment,” Kranthi enthuses.

The second approach harnesses the latest advances in cotton farming techniques to ensure high yield and profitability on existing one to two hectares farmed by the majority of smallholder producers.

ICAC research had assessed cotton production in Zambia was oriented towards high inputs, making it less profitable.

“Therefore, the focus of the second intervention, to run in parallel with technology deployment, is to get smallholder farmers to produce more cotton on a given piece of land by reducing the cost of inputs per unit kilogram of seed cotton,” says Kranthi.

Getting smart about cotton farming methods

Kranthi says quality of seed and soil are the ultimate drivers of high yields.  Therefore, farmers looking for high yields can beginning by changing what they are currently doing.

He says a recent ICAC survey of the local cotton sector showed soil degradation was one of the main reasons for the decline in cotton productivity. The situation was exacerbated by seed varieties oriented to high inputs and dependency on rain that had now become erratic.

Therefore, introduction of new seed varieties adaptable to prevailing conditions coupled by better farming technics were among the options to get an upturn in productivity.

“The common practice among smallholder cotton farmers leaned towards frequent tillage that involved making the cotton fields weed-free. This results into soil organic C being lost to the atmosphere while making the soil prone to erosion and ultimately degradation.

“The seed varieties planted on degraded soil do not help matters as they require a lot of inputs and can only be planted when the rains come. Therefore, getting smart about farming methods that surmount the factors for low productivity will make farmers emerge from the dire situation they are in,” he says.

Organic mulching, involving planting crop in between cotton plants and placing it as mulch, was a quick and low-investment option to improve quality of soil and reduce inputs.

Other options included high density planting system with straight varieties, a common practice followed in the leading cotton growing countries such as United States of America (USA), Australia, China, Brazil and Uzbekistan.  The planting geometry is 8-10 cm distance between plants in  a  row  with  row  to  row  distance  spacing  ranging  from 18  to  100cm.   

Kranthi says at the core of the options was to enhance remuneration per hectare by as much as 40%, making cotton production, in particular, and agriculture, in general, fundamental to Zambia’s diversified economic growth, poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability.