Australia: cotton output could increase 25%
Australia’s cotton output may surge as much as 25% to an all-time high after floods boosted water supplies and spurred record plantings, Bloomberg has reported.
The crop may total between 4.5 million bales and 5 million bales in 2011-2012 from 4 million a year earlier, according to Adam Kay, chief executive officer of Cotton Australia. The planted area may increase by 16% to a record 580,000 hectares (1.43 million acres), he said. One bale weighs 227 kilograms.
Increased production in Australia will add to global supplies, pressuring prices that have fallen by 55% from a record in March on ICE Futures US in New York.
“There’s less dryland crop and a little bit more irrigated and because irrigated yields more, that means we’ve got a big jump in production,” Mr Kay said in an interview in Sydney. Regions that lost crops last season because of flooding have re-planted and farmers in areas that haven’t traditionally grown cotton are sowing, he said.
