The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that cotton crop output may rise 11% next year (beginning August 1), compared with a 3% gain this year.
At the end of last year, China witnessed its worst winter drought ever delaying the plantation of new cotton crop in the Hubei province of China.
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In 1982-83, the desert city of Piura was flooded for four months, the cotton crop of the nearby valleys was washed away, and mudslides cut roads and railways in the Andes, hindering the transport of output from mines.
It grew partly out of a 1905 scandal in which traders obtained confidential cotton-crop estimates.
Uzbekistan fears the dam will restrict water supplies to its main cash crop, cotton.
Economists don't expect many of the cotton farmers who had abandoned their traditional crop for others like corn to rush back into cotton and drive up the supply.
And cotton, the main cash crop, has succumbed over the past decade to disease, credit shortages and cheaper imports.
The cost of organic conversion and lower crop yields than regular cotton (at least in the early years after a switch) have quelled farmers' interest.
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But some poorer countries, such as India (which is just harvesting its first crop of genetically modified cotton), are worried that their farmers will be shut out of European markets because they will not have the means to comply.
In Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Paraguay, South Africa, the United States and Uruguay, more than half the cultivation of at least one major crop corn, cotton, soybean or canola is genetically engineered.
African yields rank dead last in every major crop harvested, from corn to cotton.
That's because grain prices also are strong, and also because cotton is an expensive and labor-intensive crop to raise.
In any event, it should not come as a huge surprise to most cotton farmers that access to water is essential to crop performance.
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In the Rio Grande valley cotton farmers worried that the lack of sunshine would prevent this year's crop from flowering.
Every major crop around the globe is being stunted, from rice to wheat to cotton to soybeans.
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In 2002 the Americans produced a bumper crop, and are forecast to sell 2.2 million tons of cotton on the international market.
GMOs made up more than half the world's soya crop by area, a quarter of its corn and over a tenth of its cotton.
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