Farmers in Nigeria urged to adopt BT cotton to boost textile industry

• October 04, 2022

Bt cotton is genetically modified using bacillus thuringiensis, a biological pesticide, making the plant cotton variety resistant to cotton bollworm complex. The cotton plant offers several advantages including higher yield of cotton and reduced use of chemical pesticides.

“Statistics indicate that at its peak, between 1970 and 1990, it comprised about 130 modern factories and supported numerous other ancillary firms, providing about 350,000 direct jobs and 1.2 million indirect jobs among farmers, suppliers, transporters, dealers, traders, and exporters. Only about 33 factories remain standing, and the local cotton industry is comatose, primarily due to lack of good seeds, low yields, and high production costs associated with insect damage. These pests reduce yields by up to 60 per cent which has implications on farmers’ profits and have also been found to be detrimental to the environment,” National Agricultural Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) director-general Abdullahi Mustapha was quoted as saying by various media reports. Mustapha was speaking at a one-day training workshop for cotton farmers in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city.

“The workshop is designed to keep farmers and stakeholders abreast with new trends in the cotton industry. There is a need to collect the experiences of farmers who already adopted the Bt cotton, so as to know how to help them achieve better results in the production of cotton,” noted Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) country coordinator Dr. Rose Gidado.