Cabinet approves ₹5,659 crore cotton mission to double yields in 5 years

Cabinet raises sugarcane FRP by ₹10/quintal for 2026-27 season

Amid the West Asia crisis, the Union Cabinet today approved a ₹5,659.22 crore ‘Mission for Cotton Productivity’ to boost domestic production to almost 49.8 million bales, up almost 71 per cent from the existing 29.1 million bales by the 2030-31 cotton season.

 

This would be done by doubling the productivity of domestic cotton from the existing 755 kg per hectare by 2030-31. India’s cotton season runs from October to September.

 

The cotton yield will be improved through the development of high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds resistant to disease and pests, scaling up of existing and latest crop production technologies through state governments, Krishi Vigyan Kendras, and state agricultural universities (SAUs), an official statement said.

 

 

The global average cotton productivity presently is close to 833 kg per hectare. India’s domestic cotton demand is expected to rise to 45 million bales by 2030-31. The mission would benefit 3.2 million farmers.

 

In addition to this, the Union Cabinet also increased the minimum price that sugar mills must pay to sugarcane growers, also called the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP), by ₹10 to ₹365 per quintal for the 2026-27 season beginning October.

 

The approved FRP is 2.81 per cent higher than the current 2025-26 season rate of ₹355 per quintal. For every 0.1 per cent increase in recovery above 10.25 per cent, the FRP will rise by ₹3.56 per quintal, incentivising higher sugar recovery by mills.

 

In addition, for farmers supplying cane to mills with recovery below 9.5 per cent, the government has decided that there will be no deduction in FRP in such cases. Farmers supplying to such mills will receive ₹338.3 per quintal in the 2026-27 season.

 

"The farmers are expected to get more than ₹100,000 crore due to this," the government said.

 

Meanwhile, on the cotton mission, the government said that there would be large-scale promotion and adoption of the latest crop production technologies as part of the mission.

 

The Cotton Mission, which was announced in the FY26 Union Budget, will be implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Textiles, involving 10 institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), one institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and 10 centres of the All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on cotton operating in different state agricultural universities (SAUs) of major cotton-growing states.

 

Initially, 140 districts will be focused on in 14 states through the state departments of agriculture and ICAR for upscaling technologies and 2,000 ginning/processing factories. EoM