Sustainable and Traceable Cotton Cultivation

Pakistan Agricultural Coalition (PAC) has incorporated a company called Mehrgarh Kasht Private Limited (MKPL) to produce low-trash, high-quality cotton through large-scale, mechanized cultivation with full traceability of each bale and meeting the specifications required by the textile industry.

A strong team under MKPL has been put together and a pilot initiative on over 500 acres has commenced in District Rahim Yar Khan for the 2023 wheat-cotton season to produce crops under mechanized cultivation with traceability. The larger pilot partners include progressive farmers of Mustafa Farms (pilot location) and machinery service providers Farmonix who own and operate John Deere, Lemken & Fontana machinery among others.

As the world increasingly demands sustainably sourced traceable cotton, Pakistan lags behind in both production and compliance which is what this project aims to correct. The initial response from investors in the textile sector has been quite positive. MKPL has started off the cotton project with the wheat season and has completed sowing wheat on 520 acres of Mustafa Farms’ land in Machhka using Farmonix machinery.

Processes for tracing all the farming processes have been developed with plot-wise data collection and analysis and leading textile groups have sponsored this initiative, which include Dynamic Sportswear, Mahmood Group, Indus Group and Textile Marketing Company.