Nalgonda accounted for the largest area under cotton cultivation in the State. Going by the cotton sown in the district, the administration forecast a bumper harvest of about 60 lakh quintal.
But the district is facing a facing a peculiar situation. As the harvest season is on, there is a dearth of cotton pluckers here.
With growing demand for more area under cotton, it’s natural that there will be shortage of cotton pluckers. And, the bigger issue is pluckers are agricultural laborers, not machines.
Labour costs
Paying ₹12 per kg per worker for a day’s work, 60-year-old cotton farmer from Haliya Yedukondalu gets a harvest of about 15 kg of cotton.
But with demand for cotton pluckers going up, the same work has a fixed rate of ₹ 250 per day. “Every plant has at least 8 to 12 rotten bolls. What I pay for the labor is more than what I reap,” Mr. Yedukondalu points out.
Most of the cotton in the region, in full-grown stage is still on plants, not plucked due to ruined quality and change in color of the lint, farmers say the loss could be nearly 25% at the plucking stage.
Another farmer Veeraiah from S. Narayanpur shows a diary of expenses he has been maintaining since the start of the season.
He hired 18 workers from Manchala and Ibrahimpatnam, from the neighboring Andhra region, to work on his fields.
“I paid ₹5,500 to them for about 3.5 quintal. After selling the harvest to a trader or a mill owner, I am left with ₹ 3500 after covering all the costs,” he calculates.
“Labor, transportation, halting charges, and paying bribes. What remains is more disappointment, and settling for ₹ 2500 per quintal by the middleman in the village appears a better choice,” Yedukondalu calculates.
