{"id":70500,"date":"2018-10-18T11:43:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T09:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=70500"},"modified":"2018-10-18T11:43:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T09:43:06","slug":"admarc-embarks-on-irrigated-cotton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/10\/18\/admarc-embarks-on-irrigated-cotton\/","title":{"rendered":"Admarc embarks on irrigated cotton"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Taonga Sabola:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) in conjunction with the Nchalo Greenbelt Limited have embarked on a project to experiment on irrigated cotton production.<\/p>\n

The project comes at a time cotton production in Malawi has remained subdued, with the country producing only 15,000 metric tonnes of the crop during the last growing season.<\/p>\n

This is the first time ever Malawi to attempt to grow cotton in the dry season.<\/p>\n

Admarc Board Chairman, James Masumbu, said the initiative would help Malawi grow cotton twice a year, thereby improving production figures.<\/p>\n

Speaking after inspecting the project site at Nchalo in Chikwawa District, Masumbu said the board is impressed with how the project is shaping up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very impressed because, when the idea was floated, we had our doubts as a board that this would work very well so we insisted that we come here and have first-hand information.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a new idea and new innovation and we are happy it is coming out well,\u201d<\/em> Masumbu said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The initiative is being supported by Export Development Fund (EDF).<\/p>\n

Masumbu could, however, not indicate how much would be pumped into the project, saying they are inventing more money.<\/p>\n

Cotton Council Executive Director, Cosmas Luwanda, described the initiative as a game-changer for Malawi\u2019s cotton industry.<\/p>\n

Luwanda said growing cotton more than once a year would significantly boost production.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see, we have around 200 hectares under cotton production here using the right inputs and hybrid seed varieties that are high yielding.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe high-yielding varieties can give up to 3,500 kilogrammes (kg) of seed cotton per hectare as compared to the 700kg per hectare the industry produces,\u201d<\/em> Luwanda said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Malawi\u2019s cotton industry has been on the downward trend in recent years due to, among other things, the lack of a sustainable input system.<\/p>\n

Cotton production hit a record high of above 100,000 metric tonnes around 2011 when Capital Hill rolled out a K1.6 billion support initiative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Taonga Sabola: Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) in conjunction with the Nchalo Greenbelt Limited have embarked on a project to experiment on irrigated cotton production. The project comes at a time cotton production in Malawi has remained subdued, with the country producing only 15,000 metric tonnes of the crop during the last growing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":70505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70507,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70500\/revisions\/70507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}