Initially the country's cotton acreage was expected to rise 15 percent in 2011/12 on record high prices, but scant rainfall in key growing areas may prompt farmers to go for other crops like corn and soybean and even trim per hectare yield of cotton.
India, Asia's largest cotton exporter, supplies the fibre to China, the world's biggest consumer. Its exports in 2010/11 helped to cool international prices in a year when adverse weather trimmed crops in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Total world exports were about 36 million bales in 2010/11, according to the U.S.-based International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) with global production at 114 million bales.
India's western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra and southern Andhra Pradesh accounted for over 75 percent of the country's total production in the cotton marketing year that began in October and all three states have received very poor rainfall in June, data from the weather bureau showed.
Ahead of cotton sowing, a sharp rise in acreage was expected because of high returns on cotton and a forecast of near normal monsoon rains, raising concerns other crops might be squeezed out.
But poor rainfall in June derailed sowing plans as more than half of the cotton area in these three states is rain-fed.
"I don't think the area will rise this year. Soil moisture level is very low. It is not allowing farmers to sow any crop in Gujarat," said a former president of the Cotton Association of India, who declined to be named.
"If we didn't get enough rains this week, chances are the area may even go down."
Indian farmers have cultivated cotton on 3.517 million hectares as on July 1, down 22 percent compared to the sowing done by this time last year.
In the 2010/11 cotton year, the total area sown hit a record 11.16 million hectares.
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