At the end of August, the Cotton and Jute Bureau revised its forecast of China's total cotton crop this year to 4.5m tonnes, Reuters reported. This new forecast was 15.4 per cent less than 2001's record crop of 5.32m tonnes and 200,000 tonnes less than the 4.7m forecast earlier in the month. The bureau said that it had now taken into account unusually cool and wet weather in the spring, but traders said that the principal reason for the drop was the decrease in the area planted to cotton.
According to National Bureau of Statistics figures, China's farmers planted 3.71m hectares of cotton this year, 13.8 per cent less than last year.
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