Farmers get the short end of the stick

On 7 August, speaking at the birth centenary celebrations honouring M.S. Swaminathan, the father of India’s green revolution, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was ready to personally pay any price required to safeguard the Indian farmer’s interests. Days later, on 28 August, the government announced that import duty exemption on cotton — down from 11 per cent to zero — would be extended by three months until 31 December.

Domestic textile manufacturers welcomed the move. Apparently, this will help offset the losses on exports to the US following Trump’s 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods. In fact, they are demanding more steps to offset foreseeable stress points for the entire sector in the coming months.

However, as fresh harvests begin to arrive in the markets, what the import duty waiver will do is crush local cotton growers in a global scenario of sagging prices.

In one fell stroke, the Modi government rendered useless the formula — C2+50% — recommended by the Swaminathan Commission for determining the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of crops and foregrounding farmers’ income as a factor to measure farm sector growth. The idea was so simple it was revolutionary: to the comprehensive cost of production (C2) a 50 per cent profit margin for the farmer was to be added. The Farmers’ Protests 1.0 and 2.0. were anchored in this demand.

Modi’s message is for Trump: now that we have cut import duty on cotton to zero per cent, you can dump your subsidised cheap cotton on us. Signalling that India could — and might — allow the US to dump its genetically modified (GM) soyabeans in the not-too-distant future?

Cut to Vidarbha, ground zero of cotton farmers’ suicides. Amidst all the smart manoeuvres, the small and harried cotton grower has reason to be nervous already. For the past two to three years, no grower is breaking even, consumed by a maelstrom of problems from climate change to highly volatile global markets, from extremely low productivity and rainfed farming to poor quality seeds.

For about 30 years, cotton farmers across India have been in the throes of a biting polycrisis — economic, social, political and ecological. Cotton was, and still remains, the only crop where the farmer’s primary producer status has transformed a cash crop into a death trap for millions of small cotton growers.

The government raised the MSP for top quality long-fibre cotton to Rs 8,150 per quintal (for 2025); the average price is around Rs 7,500–7,800. Even before Trump’s tariffs were unleashed, prices were hovering around Rs 6,500 per quintal in the global market because of three factors: a demand slump, high inventory carried forward and a production glut in leading cotton-producing countries.

China, a major buyer, has stopped importing US cotton. Since last year, it hasn’t been looking towards global cotton markets either; it has enough stocks for now. India, on the other hand, imported nearly four million bales between April and August 2025, almost double the imports of the previous year. Why? Because of the availability of cheaper cotton, despite duty.

With Trump’s tariffs coming into play and our government slashing the import duty to zero, a cotton farmer cannot even think of selling his produce at MSP this year. In some parts of India, harvest season has already begun, and in other parts, fresh arrivals would begin by October-end. Anxious farmers have only one hope: that the Central government will intervene in the markets through the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) and buy from them at the stipulated MSPs for different varieties of cotton. That’s a big ‘if’.

Last year, the CCI bought about 10 million of the approximately 30 million bales (1 bale = 356 kg lint) produced by Indian farmers. In 2025–2026, cotton production in India is set to drop due to climatic and other factors.

On 2 September, at an interaction with representatives of the textile industry in Chennai, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman assured exporters of ‘relief measures’ to tide over this crisis. Going by industry data, the US market accounts for about 28 per cent or $10–11 billion of India’s total textile and clothing exports.

Exports have remained stagnant for a decade, rendering nearly 25 per cent of production capacity idle. The industry raised other demands, from GST concessions to focused market incentive schemes.

Speaking to this correspondent, Vijay Jawandhia, a farmer leader from Vidarbha, asked, “What’s on the table for cotton growers who would lose some Rs 15,000 crore on depleted cotton prices?” Despite duty waivers in a stiff market, the Indian textile industry may not be able to compete. But a cotton grower, he said, would be crushed — one hundred per cent.

The problem is the textile industry’s export focus on the US and other Western markets, overlooking developing countries. We have not been producing enough to meet the needs of emerging markets.

India’s cotton farming is also marred by many challenges. Our per hectare productivity is among the lowest in the world. Despite the hundred per cent adoption of BT cotton, we produce about 450 kg lint per hectare of land compared to Brazil’s 2,000 kg. Why? The answer is complex and begs another article. The global average is 800 kg per hectare. There is no new technology or seed variety in sight that would augment yields.

India’s low cotton yields stem from several interconnected issues, including widespread resistance of the pink bollworm to BT cotton, reliance on rainfed agriculture with poor protective irrigation spread, bad soil management practices, rapidly changing climate and marginal land holdings.

India’s cotton acreage has seen fluctuating trends over the past decade, peaking in 2019–20 at 134.77 lakh hectares before a noticeable slump to an estimated 124.69 lakh hectares in 2023–24. Projections indicate a further drop in the near future. In many parts of Vidarbha, the farmer prefers to keep his land fallow because it is more profitable to not sow than sow. Productivity varies across regions, from very high in Punjab to very low in the Deccan plateau.

In the new season, Vidarbha has already begun to see the sad trend of farmers’ suicides. Unless mitigated by the state or the Centre, that trend could worsen.

The industry has played virtually no role in helping farmers to improve productivity. The State has withered away, as universities and institutions led by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) don’t interact with farmers beyond the customary annual meeting and farmers’ congregations. State agricultural extension services have collapsed. Debts are growing. Credit lines are shrinking. Cotton is a noose for millions.

It is thanks to the falling rupee — a scenario once dismissed by Modi — that the Indian farmer may still manage to get Rs 6,500–7,000 per quintal for the best quality cotton, despite global cotton prices hovering around 70 cents per pound. Without this currency effect, prices would have dropped further.

Well before the high tariffs kicked in, the textile industry had already urged the government to allow the import of cheap cotton for global market competitiveness and to compensate farmers by paying the difference between the market price and the promised MSP.

Would the Modi government do that? Experience tells us, there’s no guarantee.

Jaideep Hardikar is the author of Ramrao: The Story of India’s Farm Crisis