Excerpt from Cotton in Uganda

New and improved varieties have been developed in Uganda, and their introduction will soon be complete. Despite careful and effective research and sincere efforts by government extension personnel to encourage farmers to adopt improved cultural practices, much of the crop is nevertheless planted too late to achieve best results under normal weather conditions, and other cultural practices lag far behind recommendations. Thus, although the potential exists for increased yields, production, and profitability for cotton producers in Uganda, it appears doubtful that farmers will change their past practices and adopt new techniques fast enough to reach the 1971 goal.

In terms of costs and returns, the major cost component in cotton production - under the prevailing system of cotton culture - is unpaid family labor. In a study of several cotton farms made a few years ago - but still believed to be generally representative - the output of all cr0ps had an aggregate value of $188 per farm, of which $77 represented the value of crops used by the farm family and $11 1 products sold. About $84 of this was the value of the cotton raised on acres. In order to produce this $84 of cotton, unpaid family labor was used to the extent of 195 man days and hired labor to the extent of 63 man days. This hired labor was normally paid with farm products, including homemade beer. Other expenses averaged $14 per farm for the entire crop production on the farms, but the cotton portion of this cost item is not shown separately. From this, it is evident that cotton absorbed a lot of man labor that may have had no better use, but the wage rate represented by the cotton cr0p was indeed very modest.

Exports of raw cotton from Uganda now account for about seven out of eight bales produced. The bales exported in 1968-69 were divided among 20 countries. The largest customer was Hong Kong, with bales. This was followed by India, with bales; Japan, with bales; and West Germany, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands, with from to bales each.

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