Poor rainfall in some areas and flooding in others have forced Mali to lower its raw cotton production forecast to 547,700 tonnes for the 2014/15 season, the government-owned Malian Company for the Development of Textile (CMDT) said on Thursday. The country had originally projected output of 600,000 tonnes, but this season's overall weather patterns were better than last year and the lower forecast is still well above the 400,000 tonnes of cotton produced during the 2013/14 season.
"The drop in the projection is explained by a loss of cultivated acreage due to problems of rainfall, notably late rains in some areas and even flooding in some cases," said Ousmane Traore, a technical advisor to the CMDT. He said Mali had planned to plant 570,300 hectares of farmland with cotton but managed only 539,650. Mali's annual cotton season runs from April to April. A production phase from May-June to October-November is followed by a period of sales from November-December to March.