Factors Affecting Cotton Production in Pakistan: Empirical Evidence from Multan District

This paper attempts to examine the factors affecting cotton production in multan region using primary source of data. a sample of 60 small farmers, 25 medium and 15 large farmers was randomly selected from two tehsils namely multan and shujabad of district multan. the cobb-douglas production function is employed to assess the effects of various inputs like cultivation, seed and sowing, irrigation, fertilizer, plant protection, inter-culturing / hoeing and labour cost on cotton yield. the results depicted that seed, fertilizer and irrigation were found scarce commodity for all category of farmers in district multan. the cobb-douglas production function results revealed that the coefficients for cultivation (0.113) and seed (0.103) were found statistically significant at 1 percent level. the cost-benefit ratio for the large farmers was found higher (1.41) than that of small (1.22) and medium (1.24) farmers. there is a dire need to ensure the availability of these scarce inputs by both public and private sectors as these inputs were major requirement of the cotton crop.