Cotton farming weighed down by internal and external troubles: soon no one will grow it

This is the sentence that Du Min, a scientist in the economics post of the National Cotton Industry Technology System and a researcher at the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, has heard most and said most often recently.

In recent years, China's cotton planting area has plummeted. According to the latest data from the national cotton production monitoring of the National Cotton Industry Technology System, the national cotton planting area fell by 22.8% this year; a survey by the China Cotton Association shows that the actual cotton planting area in 2015 may be less than 50 million mu, the lowest year since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Take Hebei, a major cotton province, as an example: in 2010 the province's cotton planting area was about 10 million mu, and now this figure is only around 5 million mu, almost “cut in half”.

“This year the expert advisory group of the Ministry of Agriculture arranged for several of us experts to go to Henan for research, and we were all worried about where to ‘research’.” Du Min said with a bitter smile.

The internal and external troubles of cotton production

“How low does the cotton planting area have to fall before it draws attention?”

Ma Zhiying, a scientist in the breeding post of the National Cotton Industry Technology System and a professor at Hebei Agricultural University, after traveling to Hengshui in Hebei, Binzhou in Shandong and other places to investigate the cotton production situation, saw the severe trend of declining cotton planting area year by year and felt anxious about it.

“China's cotton planting area has never fallen below 70 million mu in ordinary years. In the past, when cotton production faced problems such as severe damage from cotton bollworm and Verticillium wilt, it never declined as sharply as in the past two years.” Having dealt with cotton for more than 30 years, Ma Zhiying has a clear grasp of changes in cotton area.

What is the reason that cotton farmers are no longer willing to grow cotton? At a meeting of the Ministry of Agriculture, Du Min and the participating experts reached a consensus: the most fundamental reason lies in the collision between the product price “ceiling” and the production cost “floor”. To put it plainly, farmers “cannot make money” growing cotton.

“The current cotton market price is about 13,000 yuan/ton, while in Xinjiang the cost of producing one jin of cotton is 6.8 yuan.” Du Min pointed out that the cost of planting cotton in inland cotton regions is likewise high. In some places the “floor” is even higher than the “ceiling”, leaving cotton farmers with no room for profit.

But domestic cotton still has no advantage in the international market. From 2011 to 2013, during the period of temporary domestic cotton purchase and storage, cotton prices in India and the United States were several thousand yuan per ton lower than domestic prices. Since the state implemented the target price and related subsidy policies in 2014, domestic and international cotton prices have gradually converged, but in terms of quality there is still a relatively large gap between domestic cotton and imported cotton.

Naturally, spinning mills and other major cotton-using buyers increasingly chose high-quality, low-priced imported cotton, while domestic cotton basically flowed to state reserve warehouses at the government's market-support price. Regarding this situation, Chen Xiwen, member of the Central Rural Work Leading Group and concurrently director of its office, lamented: the biggest problem in China's agricultural products is the strange phenomenon of “three quantities rising together”——output and inventory are increasing, and imports are increasing as well.

Reasons to continue growing cotton

Since imported cotton is both better priced and higher quality, is it feasible to only import and not produce?

“Definitely not.” Ma Zhiying told a reporter from China Science Daily, “We must at least ensure that 60% of the cotton we use comes from ourselves, otherwise we will lose our voice and pricing power over cotton. Letting other countries decide our cotton use will bring even greater risks in the future.”

He pointed out that cotton, as a cash crop, has a relatively long industrial chain. The entire chain of planting, processing and trade is tied to “100 million farmers, 20 million workers and a large number of people employed in the tertiary industry”. Therefore the cotton industry is not as simple as just cotton planting: “We cannot buy foreign cotton while leaving a large labor force with nothing to do, especially in areas whose land and ecological conditions are only suitable for growing cotton.”

In Hengshui, growing cotton seems to be the only choice for this region to save its continuously declining groundwater.

Chen Guirong, a researcher with the Hengshui Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau, said that Hengshui historically grew miscellaneous grains. Starting in 2001, the cotton planting area continuously expanded, reaching a peak in 2013. The decline in cotton planting area also began that year. Stimulated by policies such as the state's direct grain subsidies, the wheat and corn planting area in Hengshui rose sharply, and large areas of cotton fields became grain fields.

The wheat + corn cropping method intensified the formation of the groundwater funnel area in North China——irrigation water for farmland in Hengshui accounts for 82% of total water use.

Soon, the problem of groundwater overexploitation in North China “alarmed the Party Central Committee”. The “Jizaoheng funnel” and the “Shandong Dezhou funnel” interlock with each other and connect with the “Cangzhou funnel”, the “Xingtai Juxin funnel”, the “Tianjin funnel” and others, forming in the eastern Hebei plain the world's largest and deepest deep freshwater “funnel area”, which has become an ecological issue of domestic and even international concern.

“The water resources in the funnel area are no longer sufficient to support long-term, large-scale, sustained increases in grain crop output. Cotton uses about 1/5 to 1/4 as much water as wheat + corn, and it is also tolerant of saline-alkali and poor soils. In such areas, growing cotton is the best choice for crop structure adjustment.” The experts participating in the cotton production research of the National Cotton Industry Technology System agreed unanimously.

Multiple challenges must also be addressed

In the eyes of veteran cotton people, cotton is not a simple cash crop; they have a deep understanding that “when cotton thrives, all industries thrive; when cotton suffers, all industries suffer”. “Without grain there is no stability, without cotton there is no security.” Song Yutian, station chief of the Jinan Experimental Station of the National Cotton Industry Technology System and former president of the Handan Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Hebei, said this.

Yet turning grain fields back into cotton fields is easier said than done——old farmers also cannot afford the cost of a year of wasted effort.

In the Heilonggang River basin, located in the core area of groundwater overexploitation in North China, since 2014 the state has provided 2,000 yuan per ton of lint cotton to subsidize farmers who grow only one season of cotton each year, which to a certain extent protected farmers' enthusiasm for growing cotton. However, in Du Min's view, the days of relying on subsidies to grow cotton cannot be sustained.

Moreover, the high cost of cotton production is not unrelated to its low level of mechanization. Because cotton is a crop with relatively high technical requirements in production, links such as production management and picking are labor-intensive and time-consuming. Without the drive of relatively high returns, farmers' enthusiasm is not high.

In addition, Ma Ping, a scientist in the pest and disease post of the National Cotton Industry Technology System and director of the Institute of Plant Protection of the Hebei Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, pointed out that cotton is a “medicine jar”, with frequent pests and diseases throughout its life, requiring frequent use of pesticides. Backward production methods directly harm cotton farmers' health and also cause a decline in farmers' willingness to grow cotton.

“Moderately large-scale planting is a threshold we must cross.” Zhai Xuejun, deputy secretary-general of the China Cotton Society, proposed that only when large-scale planting is achieved can large agricultural machinery such as cotton pickers be put to use, and problems of cotton varieties and quality can also be easily solved.

On this point, Ma Zhiying proposed that scientific research in the cotton industry must also keep up. The state should continue to increase funding support and accelerate the development of an efficient and simplified cotton planting technology system, such as suitable disease- and pest-resistant, high-yield, high-quality, early-maturing cotton varieties, full-mechanization management farm machinery and tools for cotton fields, and supporting management technologies integrating agricultural machinery and agronomy, to help cotton farmers reduce the cost of growing cotton, raise cotton quality, and let farmers “grow cotton happily”.