CCI to continue cotton procurement at MSP till month-end

HYDERABAD

The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) has decided to continue the procurement of the fibre/yarn crop till the month-end following a request made by the State government.

According to Minister for Agriculture Tummala Nageswara Rao, the CCI had so far procured 16.15 lakh tonnes of cotton valued at ₹12,823 crore from over 8.8 lakh farmers. He stated on Saturday that he had written to the Union Textiles Minister, CCI and two Union Ministers from the State G. Kishan Reddy and Bandi Sanjay Kumar requesting them to extend the procurement date since the fourth picking of cotton was still going on.

He asked the farming community to make use of the extended deadline for cotton sale and sell their produce to CCI at the minimum support price of ₹8,110 per quintal by following the fair average quality norms. He further stated that 2.24 lakh tonnes of low-quality cotton was also purchased from farmers in the market and another 9.99 lakh tonnes of cotton stocks were still available with farmers.

Though there was some opposition from the farming community and ginning mills to the ‘kapas kisan’ app introduced to register their details, the State government had addressed their concerns one by one and made them make use of the app. Booking the details of their produce (cotton) on the app was allowing the farmers to bring the stock to the procurement centre at the appointed/given time and avoid keeping their produce in queues at the procurement centres, the Minister said.

A section of the farming community (cotton producers) were worried with the information in circulation that CCI was stopping procurement even before the entire crop/cotton was picked. Now that the CCI had extended the time, the farmers could sell all their produce.

According to the agriculture department officials, cotton was raised in 50.7 lakh acres during 2025-26 Kharif season but only 45.32 lakh acres remained safe, as the crop in the remaining extent was damaged badly in the heavy rains and floods. The production of cotton was estimated at 28.29 lakh tonnes from 45.32 lakh acres.