World Cotton Day | 07 Oct 2019

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is hosting the event at the request of Cotton-4 (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) to celebrate their official application for recognition of October 7 as World Cotton Day by the United Nations.

  • The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is organizing World Cotton Day event in collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC).

Objective

  • To give exposure and recognition to cotton and all its stakeholders in production, transformation and trade,
  • To engage donors and beneficiaries and strengthen development assistance for cotton,
  • To seek new collaborations with the private sector and investors for the cotton related industries and production in developing countries and promote technological advances, as well as further research and development on cotton.

Cotton

  • Cotton is a kharif crop which requires 6 to 8 months to mature. Its time of sowing and harvesting differs in different parts of the country depending upon the climatic conditions.
  • Cotton is the crop of tropical and sub-tropical areas and requires uniformly high temperature varying between 21°C and 30°C. The growth of cotton is retarded when the temperature falls below 20°C.
  • Cotton is a drought – resistant crop ideal for arid climates and requires an average annual rainfall of 50- 100 cm.
  • It requires at least 210 frost free days in a year.
  • It occupies just 2.1 % of the world’s arable land, yet it meets 27% of the world’s textiles need. In addition to its fibre used in textiles and apparel, food products are also derived from cotton like edible oil and animal feed from the seed.
  • India is the second largest producer of cotton in the world after China.
  • Between 2011 and 2018, India implemented a Cotton Technical Assistance Programme (Cotton TAP-I) for seven African countries namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad and also Uganda, Malawi and Nigeria.
    • The technical assistance focused on improving the competitiveness of the cotton and cotton-based textiles and apparel industry in these countries through a series of interventions which had significant outcomes leading to a demand for a follow on project.

Cotton Corporation of India

  • CCI was established on 31st July 1970 under the administrative control of Ministry of Textiles, Government of India as a Public Sector Undertaking under the Companies Act 1956.
  • CCI is having pan India presence through headquarters at Navi Mumbai (Maharashtra) to safeguard the economic interest of cotton farmers in all the cotton growing regions and to ensure smooth supply of good quality cotton to the textile industry in India.
  • The major role of the CCI is to undertake price support operations, whenever the market prices of cotton falls below the minimum support prices (MSP).

Source:PIB