Kenya's cotton industry, once one of the country's main foreign exchange earners, declined substantially following liberalisation of the sector in 1991. According to a recent report by the Institute of Economic Affairs, an NGO based in Nairobi, "continued synthetic competition, diminishing world prices, introduction of cheap imports of second hand clothes and diminished cotton profitability" were amongst factors that dealt a blow to cotton production, and the textile and clothing industries.
Efforts are now being made to address problems bedeviling the cotton sector. Since it does well in areas with low rainfall, cotton has the potential to reduce poverty in the arid and semi-arid lands which make up 80 percent of Kenya, authorities say. The crop is grown in five of the country's eight provinces.
At a February meeting held in Nairobi, over 60 cotton farmers,representatives of the private sector, government and non-governmental organisations discussed challenges confronting the industry,including the high cost of production.
"One spends a lot of money farming, yet what you get after harvesting is very discouraging. I spend about 217 dollars in farm inputs on my half acre of land. Last year I harvested 300 kilos of cotton, which I sold for 0.3 dollars per kilo (90 dollars in total). Where is the profit?" asked Leonora Were, chairperson of West Kenya Cotton Growers.
Such difficulties have prompted certain farmers to abandon cotton, she said : "When we started as a group, we were more than 2,000 farmers; now we are only 600. The rest fell out because of the difficulties in cotton growing."
According to the Cotton Board of Kenya, about 350,000 hectares in the country are suitable for cotton production and have the potential to yield an estimated 260,000 bales of lint annually. However, cotton is only being cultivated on 25,000 hectares at present, with an annual lint
production of 20,000 bales.
Other farmers have tried to cut costs, in part by stopping use of pesticides and the like that are said to account for 40 percent of the total cost of producing cotton. But this, in turn, has resulted in low yields.
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