THE Tanzania Cotton Board (TCB) has set aside 25,000 tonnes of cotton seeds of variety UKM08 for the 2022/23 planting season.
Speaking to ‘Daily News’ in an interview on Saturday in Mwanza, TCB Development and Outreach Officer, Mr Edward Nyawile said that the seeds include delinted cotton seed that produce more oil during milling.
Mr Nyawile also stated that they plan to distribute one million bottles of pesticides, where agricultural inputs are loaned to farmers and payments are made after harvest.
He said that the seeds and other inputs will start to be distributed soon through companies that buy the crop in all areas in the 17 regions that cultivate the crop in the country.
Mr Nyawile said that the hairless cotton seeds have been found to be of good quality and can be planted closely from one seedling to another so they can produce 1200 to 1800 kilograms in one acre of the crop.
He said that the board uses two facilitators in each village to teach cotton farmers on best practices of farming to enable farmers to start getting the productivity of the agriculture to improve their living standards.
Likewise, the extension officers of the respective parts have been helpful in helping our farmers, so their efforts will increase their education on best practice of farming, according to Mr Nyawile.
“These cotton seeds can be planted in many seedlings within one acre, thus enabling the farmer to be able to harvest more crops unlike before where a large space was planted with few crops,” said Mr Nyawile.
He said that previously the farmer was able to harvest 300 kilos per acre of cotton yields which was not productive for them and thus discouraged the farmers of the crop in this country.
