The area has been ordered to allocate an additional 4.8 million mu of cropland for grains this year, with much of that supplanting cotton, as the government encourages farmers to switch to plants for food, according to the centre.
The decline also came after the central government lowered subsidies for cotton farmers in Xinjiang in April, as well as several impactful bouts with bad weather, including low temperatures, sandstorms and heavy rain during the sowing season, it said. Many farmers had to shift to other crops such as corn after cotton seedlings were destroyed.
Other cotton-growing areas of the country have also shown diminishing interest as costs rise and profits drop, with an estimated decrease in sowing area of up to one-fourth, it said.
Last year, the average profit for growing each mu of cotton was merely 58.4 yuan (US$8) for Chinese farmers, without taking subsidies into consideration, and that was a 97 per cent plunge from the previous year, according to the China Cotton Association.
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