The Vidarbha Cotton Association (VCA), which includes over 400 ginners, cotton producers, dealers, and brokers, has called for a boycott of the Cotton Corporation of India’s (CCI) annual tendering, which procures cash crops from farmers at the minimum support price (MSP). The call was made during ginners’ meetings in Kalmeshwar and Hinganghat.
The CCI issues tenders after buying cotton from farmers and invites gins to turn the raw material into cotton seed and lint. Lint is mechanically compressed to create cotton bales, which the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) plans to subject to quality control based on a number of criteria.
According to VCA members, weather variations, litter content, and several picking seasons have an impact on the ultimate properties of cotton. The bales are then kept by the CCI in its warehouses before being shipped to textile mills to be processed into thread, fabric, and apparel. Based on the fundamental tenet that they have no control over the quality of incoming raw cotton, the VCA has rejected the BIS move.
