{"book":"adl0957","page":61,"text":"40\n\nimprovement and successful demonstration of the use of long-handled hoe. As a result cotton production which before 1950 rarely exceeded 10,000 tons a year, in 1955 reached 47,270 tons, and is expected to reach 60,000 tons in the near future.\n\nThe increase in the production is due to the two-fold encouragement this branch of agriculture has received at the hands of the State. First, direct assistance was rendered by the Government. Taqavi or farm loans were given to the peasants free of interest. Agricultural schools and experimental stations were established. Improved varieties of cotton-seeds were supplied. Several irrigation projects were undertaken and these proved of inestimable value for the increase in cotton production. Finally in 1954 a new Cotton Export Corporation, sponsored by the Government, undertook to spread modern cultivation methods, and to improve seeds and quality of the lint.\n\nSecondly, the state accorded indirect assistance by the protection of cotton-ginning and weaving industries within the country. A large portion of this cotton is consumed locally by the textile-mills and hand-looms, and the surplus is exported.\n\nThe cotton grown in the Central Plateau is of low quality, being of very short staple. On the whole, Afghan cotton is much superior in quality to the cotton grown in the adjacent countries and has, therefore, a ready market abroad.\n\nBeet-root is cultivated extensively around Baghlan and is made into sugar at the same place. Sugar-beet harvested in 1953 totalled 23,000 tons, but in the opinion of Edwin P. Pathison, sugar-beet expert of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Afghanistan, better cultivation and better seed strains are expected to result in a yield of 56,000 to 60,000 tons in the coming years.","chars":1792,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00061.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/61","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/61","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}