China's cotton yield falls over 9% in 2015

12 Feb '16

2 min read

China's cotton yield continued to decline in 2015 as acreage shrunk, official data showed.

The country's cotton yield decreased 574,000 tonnes, or 9.3 per cent, year on year to 5.6 million tonne, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Last year, the cotton acreage went down 423,400 hectares, or 10 per cent, to 3.799 million hectares, in China, said Hou Rui, senior statistician of the NBS.

The acreage in the Yangtze River Basin and the Yellow River Basin went down by about 17.8 per cent and 14.8 per cent, respectively, according to the NBS.

The relatively low profitability of cotton and the government's abolishment of its "temporary purchasing policy" to prop up prices were to blame for the declining cotton growing area, said agronomist Pan Xiufen, Xinhua reported.

But China will remain a big consumer of cotton due to its large population, growing income and increasing export demand, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Shrinking acreage would result in a supply gap in the cotton market, it added.

While acreage and cotton yield fell in most parts of China, northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was grew more.

In 2015, Xinjiang, home to half of the country's cotton growing area, produced 3.5 million tonnes of cotton, accounting for 62.5 percent of China's total, compared to 59.5 percent in 2014, NBS data showed.
Cotton yield per hectare in Xinjiang stood at about 1,840 kilograms, 24.6 per cent higher than the national average.

China's cotton yield peaked in 2012 at 6.84 million tonnes, more than 2.2 times than that of 1978, official data showed. (SH)

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