* Cotton traders use quarter-end rally to boost profits
* USDA cotton plantings estimates in line with projections
* Bullish technical factors helped push prices up

By Carole Vaporean
NEW YORK, June 29 (Reuters) - Cotton futures finished the
week strong, rallying with a number of commodity and financial
markets following an agreement among European leaders on a
number of measures to ease the region's debt crisis.
"The big feature was the European Union agreement. It sent
the stock market up and all of the outside markets and the
dollar down," said Mike Stevens, veteran cotton analyst in
Mandeville, Louisiana.
Benchmark December cotton on ICE Futures U.S.
climbed 2.62 percent, or 1.82 cents, to end at 71.33 cents
per lb, after reaching a one week high earlier.
December volume was healthy at 14,197 lots. The total count
of 17,613 lots was about 50 percent below the 30-day norm,
Thomson Reuters data showed.
Euro zone leaders agreed on measures to stabilize banks for
debt-ridden Italy and Spain. They also agreed to let rescue
funds be used without forcing countries that comply with EU
budget rules to adopt extra austerity measures.
Given that the deal came on the last day of the quarter,
some players participated in the market-wide rally to book last
minute profits after a quarter of steep declines for cotton.
Cotton also got a lift from technical factors. Thursday's
price action registered an outside day, a higher high and lower
low on the price charts. It set a three-week low, but ended near
a two-day high, setting up for a rally in Friday's session.
Earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported its
acreage estimates for U.S. crops, including cotton.
"These numbers were right in line with expectations. From
here, USDA will hold these numbers, but will start adjusting for
abandonment," said Stevens.
Because of cotton's low price compared with other crops, he
added that any acres lost to weather will unlikely be replanted
with the fiber crop.
"Cotton is just not competitive with other crops. Any acres
that got hailed out or washed out or blown out in the month of
June will be replaced with sorghum in West Texas, soybeans in
other areas or peanuts in Georgia," he said.
As of June 1, the U.S. Agriculture Department's annual
acreage report estimated that cotton producers planted or
intended to plant 12.635 million acres, well below the 14.735
million devoted to cotton in 2011.
USDA made major cuts to acres in some big cotton growing
states like Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Louisiana
compared with March, leaving top grower Texas unchanged.
The latest figures were based on field surveys taken during
early June and update the USDA's March prospective plantings
outlook. In March, USDA estimated 13.155 million U.S. acres
would be planted with cotton in the coming crop year.
USDA said it will release its cotton harvest acre estimates
in the August crop report.

In China, the world's top cotton consumer, textile mills and
trading firms, were renegotiating prices and deferring cotton
import contracts amid widespread defaults following a slump in
U.S. prices and slackening demand, traders said.
Chinese buyers canceled 603,700 bales of U.S. cotton last
week, USDA said in its weekly report on Thursday.
Thursday's official volume picked up to 16,396 lots compared
with 12,747 lots a day earlier, ICE Futures U.S. data showed.
Open interest in the cotton market, an indicator of investor
exposure, rose to 166,598 lots as of June 28 from 165,403 lots
previously, exchange data showed.