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India is poised to overtake the United States in annual cotton production if India's cotton yield improvements remain on an upward track, the US Agriculture Department said on Monday. China is the world's largest cotton producer, now followed by the United States and India. In a special report on India's cotton production, the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service examined how cotton crop yields have steadily increased in India since 2002 due largely to the adoption of genetically modified cotton.
Both the United States and India are forecast to produce record cotton crops in the 2004/05 marketing year with 23.1 million and 18 million bales respectively, the USDA said.
India's forecast production of 18 million bales will surpass the United States' 10-year average production of 17.9 million bales, it said.
"If India yields continue to improve at the same rate as it has in the last two years, using average area, India cotton production could surpass the United States as the second-largest cotton producer in the world behind China," the USDA said.
Cotton crop yield in India jumped 26 percent in 2003/04 from the previous year. "Likewise, forecast yields in 2004/05 continued an upward trend increasing 13 percent over the previous year's record and 39 percent above the 10-year average," the USDA said.
Better yields have been driven by Indian farmers' growing use of Bt cotton, which reduces losses to bollworm infestations. In the United States, about three-fourths of all cotton planted is with gene-altered varieties.
In 2005, cotton plantings are "likely to decline" in India because of crop-switching to more profitable crops such as oilseeds, the USDA said. It did not elaborate.
The USDA will not issue projections for world cotton production in marketing year 2005/06 for several more weeks.

Copyright Reuters, 2005

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