Farmers in Malawi Abandon Cotton for Sesame
Farmers in the Shire Valley districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje are abandoning cotton in favour of sesame due to the government's imposed price, which is unstable, writes Cornelius Lupenga
LILONGWE, Malawi — Farmers in the Shire Valley districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje are abandoning cotton in favour of sesame due to the government's imposed price, which is unstable, writes Cornelius Lupenga
One farmer, Dickson Yona, said people are no longer interested in cultivating cotton due to the low prices it is fetching on the market.
He said recently that many people are busy growing sesame, which is offering better prices than cotton.
"No one can go for cotton, which is about K400 per kilogramme, rather than K1,000 per kilogramme for sesame," Yona alleged.
The farmer was quick to accuse the government of imposing prices for the commodity without considering the farm inputs farmers use for growing cotton.
Afrasian Cotton Ginners Senior Supervisor Henry Mikitithayo said there is a low turn-up of farmers on the market.
He disclosed that cotton is doing poorly on the market due to the imposed price, which is discouraging people from growing more cotton.
"We intended to buy 4.5 million kilogrammes of cotton this growing season," he said.
Mikitithayo said that for the past two weeks since the start of the sales, there has been a low turnout in most markets.
However, Mikitithayo was quick to say that this week officials may consider hiking the price in order to attract more farmers to bring cotton.
In a separate interview with the Chairperson for Cotton Farmers (COFA), Chamanga Valeta lamented that most farmers will fail to recover the loans they acquired, hence losing their benefits for the season.
He has since urged the farmers to recover their loans in time for them to be connected to the company in the 2023–24 growing season.
The Cotton Seed Production Officer for Quton Malawi, Dan Kapitapa, said the buying of the crop has gone down, alleging that most farmers are still harvesting their crop.
"For the past few years, the production of cotton has been going down while sesame production has been going up in the same period due to pricing factors," he said.