Monsoon Plays Spoilsports with Cotton Seed Companies.Home

HYDERABAD: Seed companies said this came at a time when they were struggling to deal with a sharp reduction in hybrid seed prices announced by some state governments such as Maharashtra.

Hybrid cotton seed producers are rueing the aggressive initial surge of the monsoon, saying that the above average rains in most of India last month have resulted in a 15% drop in cotton crop acreage, which means a further squeeze on their profit margins.

Good rains in the past month have encouraged farmers in cotton-growing states to switch to paddy and pulses, crops that require more water than cotton, resulting in a near 20% year-on-year fall in cotton crop acreage in northern India, a major cotton producing region. In the south, Karnataka, another big cotton producer, has seen the area under the crop fall 10%.

"The acreages shifted mostly to paddy and pulses," said C Mithun Chand, executive director at Secunderabad, Telangana-based Kaveri Seed Company.

Source:- http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/