Punjab's cotton cultivation for the 2025-26 season fell to 2.614 million acres against a provincial target of 3.2 million acres, an 18.3 percent shortfall and the lowest planted area recorded in more than three decades, according to final acreage data released by the Punjab Agriculture Department. In Rajanpur district, once among the highest-producing cotton zones in southern Punjab, the planted area contracted to 116,800 acres, down from 198,200 acres in 2018-19, a decline of 41 percent over five seasons, district extension records show. The figures were confirmed by the Punjab Crop Reporting Service in its end-of-season report dated 15 August 2025.
National Production Decline
Nationally, cotton production fell to 4.91 million bales in the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to data released by the Ministry of National Food Security and Research and verified by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association. That figure represents a 66 percent drop from the country's peak production of 14.6 million bales recorded in 2004-05. In 2024-25, provisional ginning data up to 31 March 2025 showed cotton arrivals at ginneries stood at 5.4 million bales, an improvement on the previous year but still 63 percent below the peak. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics reported that cotton production in 2023-24 was the lowest in nearly four decades excluding the flood-damaged season of 2010-11, when 11.7 million bales were recorded.
Impact on Textile Exports
The decline in cotton acreage and output carries direct consequences for Pakistan's largest export sector. The State Bank of Pakistan's Annual Report for 2023-24 states that textiles and apparel account for 55.8 percent of total export earnings. In the fiscal year 2022-23, textile exports reached 16.5 billion dollars, but they declined to 13.7 billion dollars in 2023-24, a drop of 17 percent, which the central bank attributed primarily to the domestic cotton shortage and increased raw material import costs. A 2022 study by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics estimated that the cotton value chain, from farm inputs to finished garments, contributed 8.5 percent to national GDP and provided direct and indirect employment to 40 percent of the industrial workforce.
Rajanpur District: A Case Study
Rajanpur district illustrates how the decline has affected each stage of the value chain. Ginning factories in the district have been operating at sharply reduced capacity. According to data maintained by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, Rajanpur district had 47 registered ginning units at its peak in the early 2000s. By 2024, only 19 units remained operational, and of these, just four operated for more than three weeks during the 2024-25 ginning season. A ginner in Jampur tehsil, whose factory processed 85,000 bales per season in 2005, told the association's field surveyors in February 2025 that his unit processed 4,200 bales in the 2024-25 season, operating for 19 days. The association's data shows that nationwide ginning capacity utilisation fell to 22 percent in 2024-25, down from 78 percent in 2004-05. The average number of operational days for a ginning factory in Punjab dropped from 140 days a decade ago to 28 days in the current season.
Employment and Livelihoods
Employment in cotton-related work has contracted in parallel. A household survey conducted by the Punjab Bureau of Statistics in December 2024, covering 2,400 rural households across Rajanpur and two adjoining districts, found that seasonal agricultural employment linked to cotton fell by 67 percent between 2019 and 2024. The survey recorded that the number of days of cotton-picking work available per household dropped from an average of 52 days in 2019 to 17 days in 2024. Women constituted 82 percent of the cotton-picking workforce in the surveyed villages, and the data showed that female labour force participation in the cotton harvest months declined from 44 percent to 12 percent over the five-year period. Daily wage data collected by the Punjab Labour Department shows that the average daily wage for cotton picking in southern Punjab, which was 850 rupees in 2019, had risen to 1,200 rupees by 2024 in nominal terms, but the sharp reduction in available work days meant that seasonal earnings fell by more than half in inflation-adjusted terms.
Rising Import Dependence
The shortage of domestic cotton has forced Pakistan's textile industry to rely on imports. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics trade data shows that raw cotton imports rose from 1.2 billion dollars in 2020-21 to 2.1 billion dollars in 2022-23, before falling to 1.6 billion dollars in 2023-24 as mills reduced capacity utilisation. The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association reported that between July 2024 and February 2025, cotton imports stood at 1.9 million bales, costing 987 million dollars, putting the full-year import bill on track to exceed 1.5 billion dollars. Imported cotton costs an average of 12 to 15 percent more than domestically grown lint of equivalent quality, according to APTMA's procurement data, which shows that the landed cost of imported Brazilian or US cotton in Karachi ranges from 18,500 to 20,200 rupees per maund, compared to a domestic price of 16,000 to 17,000 rupees for similar staple length.
Competitiveness Loss
The cost differential has affected the competitiveness of Pakistan's textile exports. According to the International Trade Centre's trade map data, Pakistan's share of global cotton yarn exports declined from 13.8 percent in 2010 to 7.1 percent in 2023, while its share of woven fabric exports fell from 6.2 percent to 3.4 percent over the same period. Industry representatives attribute part of this loss to higher raw material costs and inconsistent quality of domestic cotton, which has led importers in China, Bangladesh, and Europe to shift to suppliers in Vietnam, India, and Turkey.
Why Farmers Are Abandoning Cotton
Field-level data explains why farmers in Rajanpur and across Punjab have abandoned cotton. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics input price indices show that the cost of DAP fertiliser rose from 3,950 rupees per 50-kilogramme bag in 2020 to 11,200 rupees in 2024, an increase of 183 percent. Urea prices increased from 1,750 rupees to 4,800 rupees per bag over the same period. Diesel prices, which directly affect irrigation and transport costs for farmers using tube wells, rose from 119 rupees per litre in June 2020 to 285 rupees per litre by December 2024, data from the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority shows. Pesticide prices, tracked by the Punjab Agriculture Department, increased by an average of 145 percent between 2020 and 2024 for commonly used products against whitefly and pink bollworm. The department's cost-of-production estimates for the 2024-25 season placed the total variable cost of producing one acre of cotton in southern Punjab at 142,000 rupees, up from 78,000 rupees in 2019-20, while the gross revenue per acre, based on average yields of 18 maunds and a farmgate price of 8,500 rupees per maund, stood at 153,000 rupees, leaving a net margin of only 11,000 rupees before family labour costs.
Pest Pressure and Water Scarcity
Pest pressure has been a major driver of acreage decline. The Pakistan Central Cotton Committee's pest monitoring reports recorded that pink bollworm infestation affected 34 percent of cotton fields in Punjab in 2023-24, up from 11 percent in 2018-19. Whitefly populations exceeded the economic threshold level on 42 percent of monitored fields in the 2023-24 season, according to the same reports. A 2024 study by the University of Agriculture Faisalabad found that 78 percent of cotton farmers surveyed in southern Punjab identified pest attacks as the primary reason for reducing cotton acreage, followed by high input costs at 62 percent and water shortages at 41 percent. Water availability data from the Indus River System Authority shows that canal water supplies to Punjab's cotton-growing districts were 19 percent below the ten-year average during the critical June-to-September irrigation period of 2024, the fourth consecutive year of below-average supplies. Groundwater levels in Rajanpur have been declining at an average rate of 0.8 metres per year since 2015, according to monitoring data from the Punjab Irrigation Department, increasing pumping costs for farmers reliant on tube wells. Temperature data from the Pakistan Meteorological Department shows that the number of days with maximum temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius during the cotton flowering months of July and August in southern Punjab increased from an average of 18 days in the 2000-2010 decade to 32 days in the 2015-2024 period, creating heat stress conditions that reduce boll formation and fibre quality.
Shift to Sugarcane
Sugarcane has expanded significantly in traditional cotton zones. District-level data from the Punjab Crop Reporting Service shows that sugarcane acreage in Rajanpur rose from 24,300 acres in 2015-16 to 68,100 acres in 2024-25, an increase of 180 percent over nine years, while cotton acreage declined by 41 percent over the same period. The guaranteed procurement price for sugarcane, set by the provincial government at 425 rupees per 40 kilogrammes for the 2024-25 crushing season, combined with a statutory requirement for mills to purchase within a specified area, has made sugarcane a lower-risk option for growers, despite its higher water requirement. Several farmers interviewed in Jampur tehsil in March 2025 stated that they shifted to sugarcane after three consecutive seasons of cotton crop failure due to pest attacks and that the assured sale of sugarcane to mills, even with delayed payments, offered more predictability than the open-market price of cotton, which fluctuated between 6,500 and 12,000 rupees per maund over the past three years.
International Productivity Gap
International comparisons place Pakistan's productivity gap in sharp relief. Australia's cotton yields, reported by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, averaged 2,140 kilogrammes of lint per hectare in the 2023-24 season, with some regions achieving over 2,500 kilogrammes per hectare. Pakistan's national average yield, according to the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, stood at 623 kilogrammes per hectare in 2023-24, a productivity gap of more than three to one. The United States Department of Agriculture reported that the US average cotton yield was 941 kilogrammes per hectare in 2023-24, while Brazil's Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento reported a national average of 1,872 kilogrammes per hectare, reflecting the transformation of Brazil into the world's second-largest cotton exporter. India's Directorate of Cotton Development recorded an average yield of 510 kilogrammes per hectare in 2023-24, but India's total production reached 32.5 million bales from an area of 12.7 million hectares, enabled by the widespread adoption of Bt cotton on 94 percent of its cotton area and a large-scale public procurement system.
Institutional Failures
Pakistan's institutional performance in cotton research and extension has not matched these benchmarks. Australia achieved its yield leadership through specific, documented institutional mechanisms. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation allocates an average of 22 million Australian dollars per year to cotton research, covering breeding, water use efficiency, pest management, and fibre quality, according to its published annual reports. The Cotton Research and Development Corporation, funded by a statutory levy on growers matched by government contributions, disbursed 41 million Australian dollars in 2023-24 for collaborative projects with growers and universities. Australia's cotton is 100 percent genetically modified for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance, and all seed is certified under a legislated quality assurance framework. Water use is managed through a regulated system of tradable water entitlements and metered extraction, with average irrigation application efficiency of 85 to 90 percent compared to an estimated 40 to 50 percent in Pakistan's cotton fields, as measured by a 2023 Food and Agriculture Organization irrigation benchmarking study. Australia's cotton is 98 percent machine-harvested, which reduces contamination and fibre damage, and a national bale identification and traceability system tracks every bale from field to export ship.
Pakistan's institutional performance in cotton research and extension has not matched these benchmarks. The Pakistan Central Cotton Committee, the principal federal body for cotton research, had its budget reduced from 1.2 billion rupees in 2017-18 to 640 million rupees in 2023-24, according to its annual financial statements, with research grants falling by 55 percent in real terms. A 2024 review by the Punjab Agriculture Department found that only 12 cotton varieties had been approved for commercial cultivation in Punjab since 2020, of which only four had been multiplied to volumes exceeding 5,000 tonnes of seed. The Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department reported that 46 percent of cotton seed sold in Punjab's open market in 2023 was uncertified, with germination rates and genetic purity substantially below approved standards. The extension worker-to-farmer ratio in cotton-growing districts of Punjab, as recorded in the Agriculture Department's staffing data, stands at one extension field assistant per 1,250 farming households, against a recommended ratio of one per 500 households.
Economic Loss Estimates
A 2025 working paper by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics estimated the total annual economic loss attributable to the cotton production decline at between 4.7 billion and 5.3 billion dollars, combining lost export revenues, increased import costs, idle industrial capacity, and reduced rural incomes. The estimate, calculated using an input-output model of the textile value chain, assumes a counterfactual domestic production level of 12 million bales and applies sectoral multipliers to lost value addition. The paper noted that the calculation is sensitive to international price assumptions and that a separate estimate by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute placed the loss figure at 3.8 billion dollars for 2023-24 using a narrower definition of direct export losses and import substitution costs.
Policy Responses
On the policy front, the federal government's draft National Cotton Policy, circulated for inter-ministerial consultation in January 2025, proposes targets of 15 million bales of production by 2030, acreage restoration to 4.5 million acres in Punjab, and the introduction of a mandatory certified seed regime by 2027. The draft policy document recommends the establishment of a Cotton Development Board with statutory powers, funded by a cess on cotton imports and ginned cotton sales, to coordinate research, extension, and market development. It also proposes a minimum indicative price mechanism, with government intervention limited to procurement of 10 percent of the crop in years when market prices fall below production costs, a model based on India's MSP operations. APTMA has submitted a separate proposal for a contract farming framework, under which mills would supply certified seed and inputs to growers in return for a guaranteed purchase price at harvest, a model that trials in Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan districts are currently testing with 2,400 acres under contract in the 2024-25 season.
Climate Adaptation Efforts
The Punjab Agriculture Department's climate adaptation plan for cotton, published in April 2025, includes provisions for early sowing dates in Rajanpur, targeting completion by 15 May instead of the traditional June planting window, to avoid peak heat stress during flowering. The plan also pilots a pest monitoring system using pheromone traps linked to a mobile alert platform, covering 18,000 acres in Rajanpur, and provides a 40 percent subsidy on drip irrigation kits for farmers with fewer than five acres, with 620 kits distributed in the district to date. Research trials at the Central Cotton Research Institute in Multan are evaluating two heat-tolerant varieties imported from Australia under a material transfer agreement signed in 2023, with field results from the 2024 season showing preliminary yield advantages of 11 to 17 percent over local checks.
Ginning Sector in Crisis
The gap between installed capacity and actual output in the ginning sector has widened correspondingly. In Rajanpur, the 2025-26 acreage data has been received by the district administration as confirmation of a structural shift. The district's agriculture extension office reported that 6,700 farmers who grew cotton in 2018-19 had not planted the crop in 2024-25, with 58 percent of them citing financial losses from previous seasons as the primary reason for discontinuation. Bank credit data from the State Bank shows that agricultural lending for cotton in Rajanpur district fell to 1.1 billion rupees in 2024, down from 3.2 billion rupees in 2018, a 66 percent decline that has reduced farmers' ability to purchase certified seed and inputs. The number of cotton pickers registered with the district labour office for seasonal work permits dropped from 22,300 in 2018 to 4,600 in 2024, and transporters at the Rajanpur truck stand reported that cotton freight volumes fell by 71 percent over the same period. A ginning factory owner in Rojhan tehsil, whose family has operated the unit since 1979, stated in a recorded interview with the district's agricultural extension team in January 2025 that his factory had not processed a single bale in the 2024-25 season and that he had laid off all 45 workers, retaining only two watchmen. The unit's accounts, shared with the extension team, showed that it processed 31,000 bales in the 2014-15 season and 18,000 bales in 2019-20, before falling to zero in the current season. The owner stated that he had received an offer from a solvent extraction plant to purchase the factory building for use as a rice processing unit, an offer he was considering. The district's cottonseed oil extraction plant, which processed 74,000 tonnes of seed in 2018, operated at 19,000 tonnes in 2024, according to its quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, and the plant management reported that it had been importing soybean meal from Argentina to maintain capacity utilisation.
Two Decades of Decline
Pakistan's cotton production data over two decades tells a clear numerical story. From 14.6 million bales in 2004-05, output declined to 11.7 million bales in 2010-11, recovered to 13.9 million bales in 2014-15, then began a steady decline: 10.7 million bales in 2017-18, 9.1 million in 2019-20, 7.2 million in 2021-22, and 4.9 million in 2023-24. The area under cotton in Punjab fell from 5.5 million acres in 2010-11 to 2.6 million acres in 2024-25, a loss of 2.9 million acres. The national average yield, which reached 802 kilogrammes per hectare in 2014-15, dropped to 623 kilogrammes per hectare in 2023-24, while global average yields rose from 766 to 812 kilogrammes per hectare over the same period, according to FAOSTAT data. Pakistan's share of world cotton production, which stood at 8.1 percent in 2004-05, fell to 2.1 percent in 2023-24. The gap between installed capacity and actual output in the ginning sector has widened correspondingly. Pakistan's ginning capacity, documented by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, is 20.2 million bales per year, meaning that the 5.4 million bales processed in 2024-25 represented a capacity utilisation rate of 26.7 percent. At the spinning stage, APTMA data shows that the installed capacity of Pakistan's spinning sector is 13.5 million spindles, with an annual lint consumption capacity of 16 million bales when running at full utilisation. In 2023-24, the sector consumed approximately 6.5 million bales of domestic cotton and 2.1 million bales of imported cotton, running at 54 percent of lint consumption capacity. Idle capacity at spinning and ginning stages represents fixed-capital investments that are not generating returns, a factor that has contributed to an increase in non-performing loans in the textile sector, which the State Bank reported rose by 14 percent in the 2023-24 fiscal year to 178 billion rupees.
Ginners Call for Emergency Intervention
The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association passed a resolution at its annual general meeting in February 2025 calling for emergency government intervention, including the release of 5 billion rupees in outstanding payments to ginners under the government's cotton cess rebate scheme, and a ban on the conversion of ginning units to alternative uses without regulatory approval. The resolution noted that 172 ginning factories across Pakistan had permanently closed since 2018 and that an additional 90 were at risk of closure within the next two seasons if cotton acreage did not recover. The association's president stated in a press conference following the meeting that the survival of the ginning sector, which directly employs 350,000 workers and indirectly supports an estimated 1.2 million dependents, depended on reversing the acreage decline in the forthcoming sowing season.
Outlook in Rajanpur
In Rajanpur, district agriculture officials are preparing their extension messages for farmers. The office has printed 18,000 pamphlets in Saraiki and Urdu explaining the new early-sowing recommendations, and it has scheduled 120 village-level meetings for March and April. A senior extension officer in the district stated that the goal is to increase cotton acreage to 145,000 acres in 2026-27, a 24 percent increase from the current season, but acknowledged that farmer confidence remains low and that real progress will depend on the availability of certified seed at subsidised rates and the performance of the heat-tolerant varieties currently under trial. The road that runs south from Rajanpur city towards the Indus River, lined by fields that once produced thousands of tonnes of raw cotton for mills in Faisalabad and exports to Shanghai and Istanbul, will wait to see whether the white bolls return in numbers sufficient to make the harvest worth the risk.
