Cotton's footprint shrinks to 6.5m acres nationally

July 09, 2026 (MLN): The area under cotton cultivation in Pakistan has continued its long slide, with the 7th Agricultural Census 2024 recording just 6.51 million acres under the crop nationally.

This is a stark contrast to wheat, which alone occupies 43.3% of the country's entire 82.77-million-acre cropped area.

According to PBS's national findings, cotton now accounts for only 7.9% of total cropped area, ranking behind wheat (43.3%), rice (12.9%) and fodder crops (9.5%).

The census data implicitly underscores a structural shift in Pakistan's cropping mix away from cash crops historically tied to the textile export chain and toward food and fodder crops.

Provincial distribution shows Punjab remains the country's cotton hub in absolute terms, holding 58.89% of national cotton area (3.83 million acres), followed by Sindh at 28.10% (1.83 million acres) and Balochistan at 12.95% (0.84 million acres).

Notably, cotton's share within Sindh's own cropping pattern is proportionally higher than the national average, the crop accounts for 14% of Sindh's total cropped area versus roughly 8% nationally, reflecting the province's continued reliance on the crop despite falling acreage.

By contrast, wheat's grip on the national cropping pattern has strengthened. The census recorded 35.82 million acres under wheat nationally, with Punjab contributing 57.66% of that area, Sindh 14.93%, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 14.65%.

The data adds a fresh data point to a long-running conversation among textile-sector stakeholders and policymakers about domestic cotton supply, which has increasingly been supplemented by imports as local cultivation has receded.

This is a trend that predates this census but is now reflected in updated, geo-tagged farm-level figures for the first time since 2010.

PBS's national report also flagged that rice's provincial split mirrors cotton's concentration pattern: Punjab and Sindh together account for 88.56% of the country's total rice area.

It reinforces the two provinces' position as Pakistan's primary grain and fibre belt, even as the balance between the two crops continues to shift.

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