NEW YORK, July 1 (Reuters) - U.S. cotton futures ended
lower on Friday, posting their fourth consecutive weekly loss,
as fiber values continued to reel from demand destruction above
the $2 per lb level.

The market will be shut for the U.S. Independence Day
holiday on Monday and reopen on Tuesday.

Benchmark December cotton futures on ICE Futures U.S. dropped
0.78 cent, or 0.7 percent, to finish at $1.1781
per lb, after moving from $1.1651 and $1.1989. On a weekly
basis, the contract dropped 3.4 percent, its fourth straight
week of losses.

Cotton prices rallied to a peak of $2.27 per lb in the
first quarter of the year, as tight supplies and robust demand,
especially from top consumer China, fueled the charge.

But after such a fast and furious charge to price levels
unseen since the U.S. Civil War, consumer demand began to wane
and prices responded, losing more than 40 percent in the second
quarter alone.

Data this week reflected that demand destruction, market
participants said.

'The data with the loudest voice was not the supply/demand
numbers as much as it was the exports, with that huge
cancellation by China,' said Keith Brown of Keith Brown and Co
in Moultrie, Georgia.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported on
Thursday a hefty sales decline of 136,900 running bales (RBs,
500 lbs each) to China.

'We've got export hangover,' Brown said.

The market was also hit by follow-through losses from an
annual planted acreage report by the USDA on Thursday, that
pegged U.S. 2011 cotton sowings at 13.725 million acres, the
highest since 2006 when 15.274 million acres were sown.

The USDA plantings number came in at the higher end of a
Reuters poll, with the average analyst estimate at 13.26
million acres.

In India, a monsoon over the country's southern Andhra
Pradesh state slowed the cultivation of cotton to 476,200
hectares as on June 29, against 605,000 hectares a year ago.

Market volumes picked up a bit from the sluggish pace at
the beginning of the week, but remained on the low side. Only
7,526 lots traded late in New York, down 67 percent from the
30-day norm, Thomson Reuters preliminary data showed.

On the weather front, more extreme heat is in store for the
U.S. Southwest and Texas through Tuesday, forecaster Telvent
DTN said in a daily comment.

Open interest in the ICE Futures cotton market stood at
139,460 lots as of June 30, the highest since June 20 and up
2,199 lots from the previous session, ICE Futures U.S. data
showed.