KABUL, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan has harvested more than 122,000 tonnes of cotton over the past year, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock said in a statement.
The cotton harvested during the year 1402 on the Persian calendar, which starts on March 21, 2023 and ends on March 20, 2024, is 41 percent higher than the cotton harvested last year, the statement added.
Cotton cultivation over the past year covered 93,630 hectares of land in Afghanistan, compared with 54,869 hectares a year earlier.
Helmand, Balkh, Takhar, Nangarhar and Kandahar are among the provinces that contributed most to cotton production in Afghanistan.
The Afghan caretaker government, which has banned poppy cultivation, processing to drug and drug trafficking, has been encouraging farmers to replace illicit crops with legal ones. ■
