NOV. 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan harvested 50,400 tonnes of raw cotton in 2016, a 66% increase on last year, its statistics committee said.

The rise is important to the Azerbaijani government because with oil prices low and the economy tipping into recession it has revived promises to develop cotton.

In the Soviet Union, before its second oil boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s, cotton had accounted for up to 25% of Azerbaijan’s income. Investment, though, dropped away once oil became the focus.

“Next year, cotton production will lead to the creation of more than 100,000 jobs. As we expand our acre- age, this figure will grow,” President Ilham Aliyev said during a cotton- development conference in Sabirabad, Azerbaijan, on Sept. 17.

Azerbaijani authorities want to expand the cotton fields within three years by 500%, from the current 50,000 hectares. Even if Azerbaijan hits this target it will still be a fraction of the size of the world’s major cotton producing countries. Uzbekistan has around 1.25b hectares of cotton fields.

Economists, though, are sceptical on whether white gold – as cotton is dubbed in Azerbaijan – can fill the gap left by the drop in energy prices. Last year, they pointed out, cotton produced earned just $29m.

Ziya Mammadbayli, a Baku-based analyst, said that Azerbaijan didn’t even have the capacity to pick a bigger cotton harvest without forced labour.

“With low average salaries and without new equipment the has government started to send primary school teachers and doctors to cotton fields to pick it,” he told The Bulletin.

ENDS