By Rene Pastor
ORLANDO, Jan 4 (Reuters) - - American cotton plantings in 2012 are seen falling 15 percent to around 12.5 million acres although the final figure will depend a great deal on prices of cotton and rival grains, as well as the vagaries of weather, a top official of lifesciences firm Monsanto said.
"Cotton acres are going to be down," David Rhylander, the marketing lead for Monsanto's wholly owned cotton seed firm Deltapine, told Reuters in an interview late on Tuesday at the start of the annual Beltwide cotton conference here.
Monsanto is one of the world's top seed companies and is a dominant force in the cotton market.
Rhylander said their estimate is for 2012 U.S. cotton sowings of 12.5 million acres, down over 15 percent from last year's plantings of 14.72 million acres. For more data on sowings, please click on: [ID:nL1E8C375K}
The Monsanto official said the critical question is what will happen during the spring with the price of cotton <0#CT:> compared to the price of competitors for farm land especially soybeans <0#S:>, corn <0#C:> and wheat <0#W:>. March cotton futures on Tuesday closed at 95.80 cents per lb.
"That's the tradeoff you're looking at on the economic side," Rhylander said.
Some farmers and analysts feel it would be tough for cotton to compete for acres if soybeans stays at $11.50 a bushel or higher or if corn fetches a price of $6-plus bushel an acre.
Cotton futures had a roller coaster ride in 2011, hitting an all-time record high of over $2.20 per lb in March of that year.
However, the market ended 2011 as the weakest-performing commodity in 2011, losing over a third of its value from end-2010 levels. , Thomson Reuters data showed.
Most analysts who follow cotton said it would need a price of at least 90 U.S. cents for farmers to stick with cotton.
Rhylander said another key question is what happens in Texas, the biggest cotton growing state in the United States, which was hit last year by its worst drought in a century.
There are worries over Texas because the La Nina phenomenon which caused the drought is still around, although its strength is much reduced.
"Will they get rains before spring?" Rhylander asked.
