Reversing a four-year declining trend, China’s cotton production has increased by 2.7 per cent in 2017 to around 5.49 million tonnes, according to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). This is despite the area of cotton fields falling 4.3 per cent year-on-year to 3.23 million hectares, NBS said. Yield per hectare, however rose 7.3 per cent.

Owing to strong growth in yield per hectare, China’s cotton output increased 142,000 tonnes in 2017, Chinese news agency said quoting NBS data.

Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region, accounted for 74.4 per cent of the country’s total output, 7.1 percentage points higher than last year. This region saw increases in both area and yield due to production on a larger scale. Meanwhile, cotton output dropped this year in other cotton growing areas.

China's cotton output peaked in 2012 at 6.84 million tonnes, more than 2.2 times that of 1978. Since 2013, it started to decline due to relatively low profitability. (RKS)