Burkina Faso will produce around 416,000 tonnes of cotton during the 2009/10 season, cotton companies forecast, down on last year's crop of 446,000 tonnes as well as below several revised targets for the year. The estimates from Burkina Faso's three main cotton producers - SOCOMA, Faso Cotton and SOFITEX - are based on the harvest so far and a forecast for the last three months of a crop that has been blighted by erratic rains and low prices.
Burkina Faso initially targeted a 2009/10 output of 520,000 tonnes but most of the companies working in the sector slashed their forecasts in September after the rains came late, and then were cut short once they began. "This fall in production is 60 percent due to the bad rains. But there is also the low farmgate prices and the delays in making payments," SOCOMA managing director Ali Compaore told Reuters on Tuesday.
SOFITEX, the country's top producer, believes it will produce 370,000 tonnes of cotton this year, the firm said, citing poor rain and low levels of planting by farmers for the lower production. Bad weather has led to cotton output varying wildly over the last few years. Production hit a record 700,000 tonnes in 2005/06, before crashing to 360,000 tonnes in the following season.