Cotton Acreage Sees Sharp Drop in Gujarat, Maharashtra
13-Aug-2025 08:24 PM
New Delhi. There is a decline in cotton production area during the current Kharif season as compared to last year. According to the report of the Union Agriculture Ministry, its sowing area at the national level has come down to 106.96 lakh hectares,
which is 3.53 lakh hectares less than last year's area of 110.49 lakh hectares. This time the five-year average area of cotton has been estimated to be 129.50 lakh hectares, compared to which its actual area is far behind. Cotton sowing has been completed in most of the areas.
There has been a huge decline in cotton production area in both the top producing states of the country - Gujarat and Maharashtra, because many traditional producers there got attracted towards other crops.
According to the available data, compared to last year, this time the cotton production area in Gujarat decreased by 2.89 lakh hectares from 23.47 lakh hectares to 20.59 lakh hectares and in Maharashtra it decreased by 2.43 lakh hectares from 40.82 lakh hectares to 38.39 lakh hectares.
On the other hand, the sowing area of cotton in the third largest producing state- Telangana jumped from 41.37 lakh acres to 43.71 lakh acres, increased from 6.40 lakh hectares to 7.49 lakh hectares in Karnataka and increased from 5.12 lakh hectares to 6.29 lakh hectares in Rajasthan but decreased from 2.90 lakh hectares to 2.36 lakh hectares in Andhra Pradesh. Decrease in area is also reported in Haryana.
The above figures are of different dates. Although the central government increased the minimum support price (MSP) of cotton by a huge amount of Rs 589 per quintal to encourage farmers to cultivate in more area,
due to which the support price of medium staple category increased from Rs 7121 per quintal to Rs 7710 per quintal and the MSP of long staple varieties increased from Rs 7521 per quintal to Rs 8110 per quintal, but still farmers of some states were not impressed by this and they reduced the area under cotton cultivation. Last year also there was a huge decline in its area.