Indian cotton is good in quality but gets spoiled, thanks to the wrong practices from farm to bale stage that it goes through. To grab more business, this situation needs to be improved. Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF), Coimbatore, an organization of like-minded textile entrepreneurs with a combined annual turnover of over Rs.40,000 Cr., have come forward for the same. As India is expected to be the largest producer of cotton in 2018-19, with the crop projected at 28.5 million bales, this issue becomes more relevant.
Prabhu Damodharan, Secretary, ITF told that their organization is creating videos and organizing educational tours regarding the effects of contamination and its impact in the further process. Some ginners have been selected who are closely working with them to introduce best practice in all possible areas. ITF’s cotton team is actively working with more than 60 top ginners of Maharashtra, Telangana, and Karnataka.
“Contamination-controlled cotton is our focus for the year. During the first year of operation (2016-17) as a consortium, ITF cotton team has purchased 1.85 lakh bales and so far in cotton year of 17-18 so far purchase is of 3.8 lakh bales which is expected to be 5 lakh bales in next cotton season. With this growing purchase, our focus is also on awareness.,” told Prabhu. He further added that best ginners award is also planned for 15 ginners to motivate them. ITF is also distributing caps and wearable bags to the workers, planning to send technical teams for training for further improvements.
Ginners from these three states are regularly visiting spinning mills of ITF members to understand the first-hand experience of cotton performance and related subjects so they can improve the overall process. Spinning mills are also benefitted from ginners visit as they discuss with them about the practical and ground level situations. ITF members are also visiting above mentioned three states to meet ginners.