Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao asked the farming community to take advantage of the extended deadline for cotton sales and sell their produce to the CCI at the minimum support price of ₹8,110 per quintal. | Photo credit: MOHD ARIF
HYDERABAD
The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) has decided to go ahead with fiber/yarn harvesting orders till the end of the month on the request of the state government.
According to Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao, the CCI has so far procured 16.15 million tonnes of cotton worth ₹12,823 crore from over 8.8 million farmers. He said on Saturday that he has written to the Union Minister of Textiles, CCI and two Union Ministers from the state G. Kishan Reddy and Bandi Sanjay Kumar to extend them as the fourth cotton harvest is still going on.
He asked the farming community to take advantage of the extended period for selling cotton and sell their produce to the CCI at a minimum support price of ₹ 8,110 per quintal while adhering to fair average quality norms. He further said that 2.24 lakh tonnes of low quality cotton was also purchased from the farmers in the market and another 9.99 lakh tonnes of cotton is still available with the farmers.
Although there was some opposition from farmers and millers to the ‘kapas kisan’ app that was introduced to register their details, the state government addressed their concerns one by one and got them to use the app. Booking details of their produce (cotton) in the app enabled the farmers to bring the stock to the mall at a fixed/given time and avoid keeping their produce in queues at the malls, the Minister said.
A section of the farming community (cotton producers) was worried about the information being circulated that CCI was stopping the purchase even before the entire crop/cotton was picked. Now that CCI has extended the time, farmers could sell all their produce.
According to agriculture ministry officials, cotton was grown on 50.7 million acres during the 2025-26 Kharif season, but only 45.32 million acres remained safe as the crop in the remaining extent was severely damaged by heavy rains and floods. Cotton production was estimated at 28.29 million tonnes from 45.32 million acres.
Published – 21 Feb 2026 18:52 IST
