USDA Outlook Forum: Forecast The Trend Of China'S Cotton Output In The Next Two Years

According to the news released by the USDA Outlook Forum, China's cotton output in 2025/26 is expected to be 28.5 million bales, 8.1 percentage points lower than that of the previous year, greatly exceeding the forecast of domestic cotton related enterprises and institutions. According to the previous survey by the National Cotton Market Monitoring System and the National Cotton Association, in 2025, China's cotton planting area will be 41.599 million mu and 44.366 million mu, with year-on-year growth of 1.9% and 0.8% respectively (of which the cotton planting area in Xinjiang will be 3.2% and 1.5% respectively). Against the background of the expected small increase in the planting area, the probability of China's cotton output dropping significantly in 2025/26 seems small.

USDA estimates that China's cotton production will decrease significantly in the next year or it will be related to the following three factors:

First, in 2025, the weather in China's main cotton producing areas will change greatly (especially in Xinjiang), or the unit yield of seed cotton/lint cotton will decline to a certain extent compared with that in 2024/25, which will not only offset the growth of planting area, but also reduce the total output. Under the trend of global warming, drought may become increasingly tense, especially for those areas with scarce resources, they will face more serious drinking water crisis and food crisis. The climate challenge in Asia is also unique. Drought, high temperature and flood often take turns, especially in the agricultural areas where crops are expected to perform poorly.

Second, the USDA Outlook Forum is still skeptical of the year-on-year growth of China's cotton planting area in 2025. On the one hand, since 2025, Chicago grain futures have rebounded continuously, and the domestic grain and cotton prices have climbed, and the phenomenon of other crops competing for land with cotton has happened again; On the other hand, the targeted price subsidy for cotton in Xinjiang in 2024/25 has not yet been granted, and the problems involving funds for agricultural material procurement, land preparation and sowing (especially for some land contracting growers) may need to be solved through loans from various financial institutions.

Third, the USDA Outlook Forum or its estimate of China's cotton output in 2024/25 is too high, leading to a large decline in the next year's output. As the industry widely speculates that the accumulated processing and public inspection data of Xinjiang cotton in this year are falsely high, there are errors in the estimation of the real cotton output of Xinjiang/China in 2024/25.