Cotton farmers earn only just over 1,200 yuan per mu of land: cash crops are no longer "economic"

From input to output, cotton farmers feel that growing cotton is no longer “economic”, and they have reduced the planting area. The difficulties facing cotton production serve as a warning to us that grain production must guard against the emergence of this kind of “uneconomic” situation

Next month, the new cotton year will begin. The temporary cotton purchase and storage policy that had been implemented for 3 consecutive years will not continue this year, and the pilot reform of the target price has officially started. How the cotton market will perform this year is something all parties are watching. These past few days, in phone calls with several correspondents in Shandong, when the conversation turned to cotton planting conditions, they all reported that in recent years the cotton planting area in their area has been continuously declining. This situation does not seem to be an isolated case. Data show that in recent years the cotton field area in the Yellow River basin and the Yangtze River basin has indeed shown a shrinking trend. Why is this so? Farmers' feelings are the most direct. They say that although cotton is a cash crop, it is no longer very “economic”.

First, labor input is no longer “economic”. Nowadays, when growing other grain crops, from sowing to harvesting, full mechanization can basically already be achieved. Farmers do the accounts: the time they actually work in the fields is at most no more than a week. But growing cotton is not like that. Cotton has a long production cycle, many stages, and a low level of mechanization. Pruning cotton branches, pinching off the side buds, killing cotton pests, picking cotton, and even plowing the land several times over, inside and out, require at least a month of work. Take the picking stage as an example. Data show that about 30% of the world's cotton is picked by machine, while China's machine-picking rate was only about 8.2% in 2012. Against the backdrop of continuously rising opportunity costs in agricultural production, having farmers devote a large amount of labor to cotton production is clearly not very worthwhile.

Second, planting returns are no longer “economic”. On the same piece of land, cotton can only be grown for one season, while grain can be grown for two seasons with wheat and corn, and vegetables and fruits can be grown for multiple seasons. Although today's cotton price is still higher than grain prices, because the minimum purchase price for wheat has risen year after year, it is already difficult for farmers to be as satisfied with the grain-to-cotton price ratio as they were in the past. Data from Shandong show that last year the province's ginned cotton yield was 65 kg/mu. Calculated according to the already released 2014 cotton target price of 19,800 yuan/ton, the income per mu of land is about just over 1,200 yuan. This is basically comparable to the income from growing two seasons of grain, far below the income from growing vegetables and fruits, and even farther below the income from going out to work. When returns do not match expectations, how can cotton farmers' enthusiasm for planting be raised?

When neither the input nor the output stage can be satisfactory, it is no wonder farmers feel that growing cotton is “uneconomic”. When a cash crop is no longer “economic”, it is no wonder the planting area declines.

The difficulties facing cotton production serve as a warning to us that grain production must guard against the emergence of this kind of “uneconomic” situation. In recent years, the trend of high input and high cost in grain production has become increasingly obvious, and the situation of low comparative returns from grain growing will be difficult to change in the short term. At the same time, farmers' income from non-agricultural labor has risen substantially, and the growth rate of income from non-agricultural sources is far higher than the growth rate of income from agriculture. In some areas, farmers have begun to “dislike farming” and “abandon farming”; even if they choose to work in farming, the tendency toward non-grain production is relatively serious.

Safeguarding food security cannot be separated from farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain and working in agriculture. The core of mobilizing farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain lies in making grain growing profitable for them. To ensure farmers' returns from growing grain, there must be subsidies, and there must also be support. In the future, on the one hand, while continuing to expand the total amount of subsidies, we should explore and establish a mechanism linking agricultural subsidies to grain production, ensuring that those who grow more grain receive more subsidies and maintaining farmers' enthusiasm for production; on the other hand, we should improve the grain price formation mechanism, keep grain prices at a reasonable level, and ensure that farmers increase both production and income through price support. At present, just as transforming production methods, raising the level of mechanization, and lowering production costs are the realistic choices for cotton farmers, grain farmers should do the same in order to ensure that input and output are more economic and worthwhile.