China sees critical grains cut into copious cotton yields, including in boycotted Xinjiang region

Farmers across China are increasingly being pushed to grow plants for food, rather than resources, to ensure that people and livestock can be fed

Xinjiang, which accounts for the vast majority of China’s cotton, will allocate more cropland for edible grains amid US-led trade restrictions on goods from the region

Reading Time:2 minutes

A cotton picker works a field in China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region last November. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 9:30pm, 29 Jun 2023

Cotton planting acreage in China, the world’s top grower of the plant, has dropped significantly in the span of a year, amid a US-led boycott and Beijing’s aggressive push to boost national grain production.

Farmers had grown about 41.4 million mu of cotton (2.76 million hectares) as of the end of May, 10.3 per cent less than a year prior, a market-monitoring platform under the country’s operator of state cotton reserves said on Wednesday, using a common Chinese unit of measurement.

The decline was mainly driven by a shift to grain sowing, as Beijing has ramped up efforts in recent years to increase grain production amid concerns over food security, the China National Cotton Information Centre said in a post, citing a nationwide survey last month.

It was also a result of the global apparel industry’s boycott of cotton from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, China’s top producer, for alleged forced labour, according to a professor of agriculture.

China provides more than 20 per cent of the world’s cotton, and Xinjiang accounted for 90 per cent of the country’s total production last year, according to official figures.

The area has been ordered to allocate an additional 4.8 million mu of cropland for grains this year, with much of that supplanting cotton, as the government encourages farmers to switch to plants for food, according to the centre.