Recently, the US “Cotton Growers” magazine released survey results, predicting that the US upland cotton and Pima cotton planting area will total 12.538 million acres in 2022, an increase of 7% from the US Department of Agriculture’s 2021/22 planting forecast.
Jody Campiche, vice president of economics at the National Cotton Council (NCC), also said that fertilizer prices and supply conditions may prompt an increase in cotton planting in most parts of the United States in 2022, but due to water supply and drought, crops in the western United States will There are still issues with the scale.
A mid-December 2021 forecast from a private U.S. institution stated that the U.S. cotton planting area in 2022 will be 12.093 million acres, a year-on-year increase of 8%, while other industry figures predict that U.S. cotton planting will expand by 15-25%. Obviously, there is a consensus in the industry that the US cotton planting area will increase significantly year-on-year in 2022, and the focus of the debate is the growth rate.
A foreign businessman and several large cotton trading companies do not agree with the judgment that the US cotton planting area will increase significantly year-on-year in 2022, mainly for the following two reasons:
First, the drought and high temperature in Texas, which currently accounts for nearly one-third of the cotton planting area in the United States, has not subsided. The soil moisture continues to deteriorate, and there are great variables in the cotton planting rate. Although most cotton areas in the United States have experienced rain and snow since late January, the southwestern and south-central cotton areas have not quenched their thirst (West Texas has only had local sporadic precipitation since the beginning of winter), and the drought continues.
Second, the industry’s concerns about serious delays in U.S. cotton shipments in 2022 have intensified. Farmers and exporters have also called on planters not to expand cotton planting in large areas. According to USDA statistics, due to severe delays in harvesting and processing of new cotton in the United States, coupled with difficult to solve logistics problems, U.S. cotton shipments decreased by 45% year-on-year by the end of December (exports to China decreased by 70%, and exports to Vietnam decreased by 50%). %).
According to Kuehne + Nagel Seaexplorer data, there are currently 612 container ships anchored or drifting outside ports such as Los Angeles, Long Beach, Seattle, Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Oakland, New York, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Ningbo, Rotterdam and Antwerp, but globally 80% of port congestion occurs in North America.
In addition, the sharp increase in the cost of chemical fertilizers in the United States is also an issue that must be considered. According to foreign news, the wholesale of chemical fertilizers in the United States dropped significantly in January, but the current retail price is still twice that of last year. Cost pressure may limit the extent of US cotton planting expansion. .
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