Target pests: Sucking pests, jassids, bollworms, thrips
Preparation: Farm-made: Pound 30g neem kernels (that is the seed from which the seed coat has been removed) and mix with 1litre of water. Leave overnight. The next morning, filter the solution through a fine cloth and use immediately for spraying. It should not be further diluted.
Remarks: Sprays from neem seed or leaf extract do not kill the insects but reduce their feeding, moving and multiplying rates. Therefore, the effect is not noticeable until after few days. The main advantage of using neem is that it is not harmful to most beneficial insects. To a limited extent, neem’s active substance is also absorbed by the plants and thus affects the pest when they feed on the crop.
Ingredients: Powdered flower heads or liquid extracts of a daisy-like chrysanthemum
Target pests: Red cotton bug, cutworms, grasshoppers
Remarks: Pyrethrum causes immediate paralysis or death to most insects, but also affects beneficial insects.
The quality of the cotton harvest depends on the length of the fiber (staple length), on the degree of contamination with non-fiber material such as leaves or dust, and on the portion of fiber damaged by pest or disease infestation.
Good-quality raw material helps to produce yarns and garments of high quality, and thus eventually contributes to the market success of the organic cotton project. When cotton buyers fix prices, they usually take into consideration the quality of the cotton seed.
Measures taken to improve the quality of the harvest that directly pay off for the farmers:
A major cost factor in cotton production is the labor required for cotton picking. The following suggestions might help to increase the efficiency of cotton picking, and to ensure a high quality harvest:
If farmers store the harvested cotton before selling it, they should take care to prevent contamination from dust or chemicals, especially fertilizers, pesticides, and petroleum. Never use any storage pest control (DDT) on the harvested cotton! No foreign fiber material (from clothes, human hair etc.) shall get into the cotton, as it can affect the quality of the yarn.
The storage place needs to be clean and dry. Damp conditions can lead to the growth of fungus, with significant loss of cotton quality. When organic harvest is stored in the same facilities with conventional cotton (in ginneries), care must be taken to clearly separate the organic, in-conversion and non-organic produce, and to avoid any mixing.
Farmers’ income from a crop depends on the yields, the costs of production, and the price gotten on the market, and the production risk involved. Thus, there are four ways farmers can earn a better and more sustainable income through organic production:
Organic farmers get the maximum benefit when they manage to combine all these approaches.
With organic cotton, farmers follow one of two different strategies to achieve good profits: