Russian news agency ITAR-TASS
December 7

Having gathered 3.2m t of "white gold" [cotton], Uzbek cotton growers completed the harvest of this valuable raw material, which earns the lion's share of the country's budget in foreign currency revenues.

The Uzbek Agriculture and Water Resources Ministry's cotton-growing directorate emphasized that this year's harvest was 80,000 t less than last year's.

The ministry noted that the reason was heavy rainfall in the spring which made it necessary to plant cotton again in approximately 20 per cent of the 1.29m ha of land allocated for cotton cultivation, and also low temperatures that delayed the cotton ripening for two weeks in the summer.

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