Cotton futures fell for the first time in four days on renewed concern that worldwide consumption will trail output.

Global production will top demand in the season ending July 31 by 4.5 million metric tons, compared with a March forecast for a surplus of 4.02 million, Cotlook Ltd., a research company based in Birkenhead, U.K., said yesterday. The forecast on consumption was cut 2.1 percent.

“The continued drop in demand is discouraging,” Sharon Johnson, a senior analyst at Penson Futures in Atlanta, said in an e-mail.

Cotton futures for July delivery slid 0.1 percent to 90.6 cents a pound at 10:32 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. The price rose 4 percent in the previous three days.

Before today, the commodity tumbled 47 percent in the past 12 months as demand dwindled in China, the worldΆs biggest consumer. The U.S. is the top exporter.

“Inquiry has gone flat as a pancake domestically and overseas,” Jordan Lea, the president of Greenville, South Carolina-based Eastern Trading Co., said in an e-mail. “It can come back just as fast, but right now, demand is non-existent.”