HYDERABADAgriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao spoke to officials of the Textiles Ministry on Sunday, and requested them to take a positive decision on problems faced by ginning mills, following increasing pressure from farmers against the new norms in cotton procurement.The new guidelines issued by the Textiles Ministry, particularly in the name of L1 and L2 norms, were causing problems to the ginning mills and in protest they had decided to go on strike from November 17. He also appealed to the authorities to restore the 12 quintals per acre procurement against the new norm of allowing only 7 quintals of cotton purchase per acre.As suggested by the authorities of the Textiles Ministry, district-wise cotton yield details were collected, and if necessary, the government was prepared to provide even farmer-wise yield statistics.As per the details collected at the field level, the average yield of cotton was 11.74 quintals per acre and a request was made to issue orders revising the 7 quintals per acre norm with 12 quintals.The ‘anti-farmer’ decisions by the Textiles Ministry and Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) have allowed only 1.18 lakh tonnes of cotton procurement from 67,000 farmers so far. At a time when the cotton procurement was supposed to pick up momentum, the decision to go on strike by ginning mills and stop procurement would not augur well for farmers, he said.The Minister stated that farmers had already suffered a lot due to excessive and untimely rains and were overcoming it now, with sunshine helping their produce lose moisture content.Published - November 16, 2025 08:20 pm IST