Cotton Marketing Season Extended To End Of August
The 2023 cotton marketing season has been extended to the end of this month to allow farmers to complete delivering their crop.
Deliveries currently stand at over 86 000 tonnes but are expected to reach 100 000 tonnes, doubling the harvest from last year (48 000 tonnes).
Agricultural Marketing Authority (AMA) business director Jonathan Mukuruba told The Herald that the extension of the marketing season is meant to ensure that all farmers complete delivering their crop. He said:
We received requests that there are some other areas that did not finish delivering their crop hence we have decided to extend the marketing season to the end of August to ensure that all farmers complete delivering their crop.
Statistics released by AMA show that the four cotton buyers purchased 85 920 590 kg of seed cotton valued at US$28 440 927 and $22 885 283 553 in local currency.
The increase in cotton production this season has been attributed to the provision of free inputs by the Government and the classification of cotton as an export crop this season.
This year, cotton farmers are paid 85 percent of their total sales in United States dollars and the remainder will be paid in Zimbabwe dollars at prevailing interbank exchange rates upon delivery of the crop at any COTTCO buying point.
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