In late May 2022, the National Cotton Market Monitoring System launched a nationwide special survey on the actual cotton sowing area. The samples involved 14 provinces (autonomous regions), 46 cotton planting counties (cities, groups), and 1,700 designated cotton planting information contacts. household. The survey results show that the actual cotton sowing area nationwide in 2022 is 44.281 million acres, an increase of 1.091 million acres year-on-year, an increase of 2.5%. Details are as follows:
1. The area of cotton sown in Xinjiang has increased steadily
In 2022, the actual cotton sowing area in the northwest inland will be 37.190 million acres, an increase of 1.445 million acres year-on-year, an increase of 4.0%. Among them, the actual cotton sowing area in Xinjiang was 36.904 million acres, an increase of 1.344 million acres year-on-year, an increase of 3.8%.
2. The actual area of cotton sown in the Mainland continues to decline, and the decline rate narrows significantly.
In 2022, the actual cotton sowing area in the Yellow River Basin was 4.271 million acres, a year-on-year decrease of 291,000 acres, a decrease of 6.4%, and a decrease of 17.6 percentage points from the previous year. Overall, the actual sowing area in various provinces is still on a downward trend, with Henan and Shandong provinces declining by 10.9% and 7.7% respectively, and other provinces falling by less than 5%.
In 2022, the actual cotton sown area in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River will be 2.604 million acres, a year-on-year decrease of 6,000 acres, or 0.2%, which is 29.0 percentage points narrower than the previous year. Overall, the actual sowing area in each province “increased and decreased significantly”, with Jiangsu Province, Anhui Province, and Jiangxi Province decreasing by 3.4%, 3.2%, and 2.2% respectively year-on-year. It is worth noting that Hubei Province’s year-on-year growth rate was 2.9%, the first positive growth in the past five years; Hunan Province also ended its five-year decline and turned to a year-on-year growth rate.
3. Main reasons for changes in actual cotton sowing area
1.Xinjiang
In 2022, the main reasons for the increase in Xinjiang’s cotton sown area are: first, the country will continue to implement a deepening cotton target price subsidy policy in Xinjiang in 2022, which has consolidated the confidence of Xinjiang cotton farmers in cotton planting; second, the purchase price of Xinjiang seed cotton in 2021 hit an 11-year high , the income from cotton planting has increased significantly, and cotton farmers are more enthusiastic about planting cotton this year; thirdly, with the improvement of cotton mechanization productivity in southern Xinjiang, some scattered land has been destemmed and leveled, and the cotton sown area has further increased.
2.Mainland
In 2022, the main reasons for the continued decline of cotton sown area in the Mainland are: first, the mechanization rate of cotton in the Mainland is relatively low, the cost of manual picking is relatively high, and the price of agricultural inputs has risen sharply, and cotton farmers’ enthusiasm for planting has declined; second, since 2021, food prices have The price has risen sharply, and some cotton farmers have switched to grain crops; third, the target subsidy level for Xinjiang cotton has not been implemented in the mainland, cotton farmers’ willingness to plant cotton continues to be sluggish, and the cotton sown area in the mainland continues to shrink. However, as cotton prices soared to an 11-year high, mainland cotton farmers’ confidence in cotton planting has recovered, and the decline in cotton sown area in the mainland has narrowed significantly.
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