Cotton projections up for China and Australia, down for India and Brazil
Cotton industry information resource Cotlook made several major adjustments to its projections for the 2022-2023 season.
Its projected production figures for Australia and China increased, while those for India and Brazil decreased.
It cited “near-ideal growing conditions” in China, resulting in a crop of more than 6 million tonnes there for the first time.
In Australia, wet weather last autumn (at the start of 2022) made growing conditions there difficult, but the more positive projection Cotlook has made now is because the same conditions also led to an expansion in dryland planting.
The Cotton Association of India is now projecting a crop that will “fall well short of earlier expectations”, UK-based Cotlook said; it has lowered its own figures accordingly.
For Brazil, it said crop expectations remained good, but that earlier confidence on the ground of yields reaching record highs this season had now been tempered.
The result was a net increase to our assessment of world output of just 24,000 tonnes, to 24,916,000. Meanwhile, no changes were made to our assessment of global consumption in 2022/23, so stocks by the end of the current season are forecast to increase by 1,596,000, barely changed from a month earlier.
