Rajasthan holds the fifth position in India in cotton production with the Ganganagar, Hanumangarh and areas in the Indira Gandhi Canal Project taking the lead positions.

The highest ever production recorded in Rajasthan during the year 1996-97 was put at 13.63 lakh bales with the total area being close to seven lakh hectares.

The market arrivals of cotton have begun in the State's biggest mandi at Ganganagar and the Deshi cotton is being sold at around Rs 1700 per 40 kg. On the contrary the American cotton is being sold at a price range of Rs 1900 to Rs 2000 per 40 kg. The most common variety grown in the district is J-34.

Due to the fall in the production there is no glut in the mandies as was the case during 1996-97m when the growers had to sell their stocks at athrowaway prices.

Local farmers in the area are of the view that the cotton prices this year may surge forward and in expectation they are holding back their stocks.Due to the long dry spells this year in the entire belt, which borders both Pakistan and Punjab, the crops had been hit by bowlworms and heliothis with the damages being in the range of 30 per cent. Timely steps taken by the State Agriculture Department could minimise the damages, claims Purshottam Agarwal, Director of the Department.

Talking to the Financial Express, Agarwal said that last year the districts had also been hit by the cotton leaf curl virus (CLCV) and as a result 40 per cent of the crops had been lost. The production last year was around 8.67 lakh bales.

This year too the crops would have been hit by CLCV if the Department had not taken the preventive steps such as sowing Deshi cotton in a belt of 20 kg long along the border. The Deshi cotton is known to be resistant to the CLCV and the timely steps have made the crop safe inthe interior areas.Agarwal said that the Deshi variety of cotton has got to be irrigated during the months of April-May. And this year the Department could get the flow of waters in the canals as a result of some special efforts.

Financial Express learns that the farmers in the rich belt (Ganganagar and Hanumangarh distrcits) are also thinking in terms of alternate crops as the cotton crop is becoming increasingly prone to some of the known diseases. Gowar is considered a good crop to replace cotton but the returns are not much. Cotton is a cash crop and the returns are quite sizable.

A large number of Ginning Units have come up in the entire belt with as many as four spinning mills having gone into production. Apart from the sales outside huge quantities of cotton are also being consumed locally.

Time was when Banswara district in Rajasthan, which borders Gujarat, was the biggest cotton growing area but for some years now its sowings have been stopped. This is due to the farmers not taking up othercrops in their fields for years together. In the absence of the crops being rotated (mono-culture) the yields became very low and the sowings became unviable.

The symptoms of ``mono-culture'' have also been seen, of late, in the Ganganagar district and if the farmers fail to rotate their crops the harm maybe immense in the times to come, confirms Agarwal. In the district too cotton cultivation had been taken about 50 years ago.

The productivity of cotton in Rajasthan is the second highest in the country at 3.5 quintals per hectare and in some areas the output is even more. Efforts are also being made to protect the pest-infested crops by the use of bio-control measures. The response has been quite good.