An ATMA release said farmers from Ahmedabad and Vadodara participated in a meeting held here recently and spoke about their experiments on the field. Also present at the meeting were vice-president of the Textile Association of India Ashok Garde and ATMA secretary-general Abhinav Shukla. Shukla said ATMA was trying to help its members to change their corporate strategies so that they could be compatible with the open market conditions.

It was revealed at the meeting that a production technique developed by Institute for Studies and Transformations (IST), a non-governmental organisation, showed excellent results like increase of up to 200 kg per hectare. Besides cotton, better yields were reported by farmers from Savli taluka of Vadodara district in wheat varieties.

IST president Jagdish Nazareth said helping farmers in adopting sustainable organic farming techniques, especially cotton farming, was in the interests of the industry. He said use of nitrogenous and chemical fertilisers had earlier wiped out the cotton production base in Bharuch and Sabarkantha districts and was now causing havoc in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh.

Experts from the Cotton Corporation of India and Gujarat Agriculture University are meeting on Sunday with representatives of ATMA and IST, the release said.