The Cotton Council of Malawi (CCM) has revealed that farmers’ failure to repay loans is hindering growth of the cotton industry.
This was disclosed by CCM chairperson Patrick Khembo in Lilongwe on Wednesday.
Khembo said many smallholder farmers in the country fail to buy inputs to farm on their own and they always rely on loans to support their farming.
However, most of the times the small scale farmers fail to pay back the loans.
Khembo gave an example of last year when most farmers could not pay back the loans due to low yields.
He said cotton farmers in the country took a loan which was summing up to 2 billion Kwacha but unfortunately only 700 million kwacha has been given back and there is no hope that the farmers will pay back the remaining 1.3 billion Kwacha.
“The farmers took a loan amounting to K2 billion with the hope that they will be able to return it but for various reasons they have been unable to do so,” said Khembo.
He however admitted that some farmers willingly decide to default, a development which he said is worrisome.
Cotton is the fourth largest agricultural export after tobacco, sugar and tea, engaging over 300,000 farming families.
let me tell you this,cotton it is now a dying crop,the cotton council and ginners have no solution to revive the crop,poor price at the world market,ginners who previously invested little during production,climatic change,bogus inputs,loan defaulters.many companies are pulling out to buy this year,the crop is very small,now no any company this YEAR wil dare to give loans to avoid loss from this defaulters,with this hunger a farmer will not be able to buy seeds or chemicals,the govt should reconsider introducing the subsidy again,free inputs,then you have ur levy as you did previously,remember this system was called off coz other lead ginners are crooks could not distribute inputs in time and not enough,let alone Great Lakes Cotton and some few doing a good job now the company is gone,others are following suit very bad.NO COTTON NEXT YEAR….
Don’t tell lies. Cotton prices have been too low for confort for too long. It’s much profitable to grow other crops than cotton.