Plan To Cultivate 74.000 Hectares of Cotton for Current Season-Highest Implementation Rate In Deir Ezzor Province

The concerned authorities in the Ministries of Agriculture and Water Resources are seeking to increase the areas planted with the cotton crop- one of the most important strategic crops- through providing production requirements of fertilizers and pesticides, in addition to rehabilitating the sabotaged public irrigation networks.

The Director of Plant Production at the Ministry of Agriculture, Eng. Abdel Moein Qadamani, said that the ministry extended the financing period until the end of the current month to give cotton farmers ample time to take their full need of fertilizers, available in agricultural banks. Qadamani added, “The ministry is seeking to increase the areas planted with cotton this season, after a great decline during the past years as a result of high production costs, sabotage of irrigation canals and the shift to growing other crops.”

Qadamani went on to say, “The agricultural plan covers all the cotton producing provinces according to their capacity of irrigation networks, given that cotton requires large quantities of water.” He added that the areas, targeted by the plan for growing cotton this year are 73.858 hectares; that is 200 hectares more, compared to last year, indicating that cultivation has already started in all regions. It is worth mentioning that the cultivated area until the sixth of the current month has reached 1,304.848 hectares in accordance to the intended plan, with a rate of 18% of implementation, against 8,589 hectares in the same period of the previous year.

According to Qadmani, Deir Al-Zour province comes first in achieving  the target of the plan with 48% rate of implementation of the plan and a cultivated area of 6,850 hectares out of 14,300 hectares. Following is Raqqa province with 11% rate of implementing and a cultivated area of 3000 hectares. In Aleppo, the cultivated area has reached 272 hectares, and in Ghab area 112 hectares with expectation of an increase in the pace of cultivation process during the coming period.

Rayan Faouri