Cotton to be ginned in southern Chad

The minister of agriculture of the Central African Republic (CAR), Pierre Bianza, has announced that his government will take necessary measures to harvest the 2002-2003 season cotton crop and send it to neighbouring Chad for ginning, government-controlled Radio Centrafrique reported on Thursday. Cotton is the most important revenue-generating crop for CAR farmers, especially in the north. It is the third most important revenue-generating source for the CAR government, after timber and diamonds. The proposal was made on Thursday by Philippe Magino, the managing director of the Societe centrafricaine de developpement des textiles (Socadetex), a company dealing with cotton, during a meeting convened to decide how to best use the 8,000 mt of cotton produced during the 2002-2003 season. It was decided that the cotton would be purchased from CAR farmers and then sent for ginning at plants in the cities of Sahr and Doba in southern Chad. The war fought from October 2002 to March 2003 between forces loyal to the current CAR leader, Francois Bozize, and those loyal to former President Ange-Felix Patasse, mostly in the cotton-rich north of the CAR, has until now prevented farmers from harvesting their 2002-2003 cotton crop. The 2001-2002 harvest, which had been stored in the Socadetex factory in Bossangoa, located 305 km north of the CAR capital, Bangui, was looted and the factory destroyed. Officials of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have warned of serious risks that cotton farmers would lack seeds for the coming season, as last season's crop had not yet been ginned. FAO noted that a similar risk existed for a variety of food crops, as hungry farmers had consumed their seeds. In its appeal in late April for US $9.1 million, the UN system in the CAR said that 150,000 farmers urgently needed seeds to cover 90,000 ha for the coming agricultural season, which normally begins in April-May.