More than 30 million acres of cotton in Xinjiang have been sold. How good is the quality of Xinjiang cotton?

Steady planting: The income is getting better and better

In Yingbostan Village, Kumish Town, Toksun County, Turpan City, Xinjiang, 38-year-old cotton farmer Keremu-Aihe Maiti has been dealing with cotton for seven years. Starting in 2018, all cotton fields in Kremu have been mechanized, making cotton cultivation increasingly easier, more efficient, and more profitable.

“Beidou navigation is used for sowing, automatic drip irrigation is used for watering, and cotton picking has also been mechanized.” Kremu said that in recent years, the scale of his own cotton cultivation has increased year by year, now reaching more than 600 acres. The annual net income is more than 600,000 yuan.

In recent years, with the country’s implementation of the cotton target price subsidy policy for Xinjiang, and the increase in policy support such as agricultural machinery subsidies and land transfers, cotton planting income has continued to increase, and Xinjiang’s cotton planting area and cotton output have increased. It has grown rapidly and its proportion in the national cotton industry continues to increase.

“Xinjiang’s cotton output now accounts for more than 90% of the country’s total output.” Wang Jianhong introduced that Xinjiang’s cotton output, unit yield, planting area, and commodity allocation volume have ranked first in the country for more than 20 consecutive years.

Compared with Xinjiang, the cotton planting area in other provinces has declined year after year due to factors such as planting efficiency and planting structure adjustment. Liu Shuang, general manager of Hubei Yinfeng Cotton Co., Ltd., who was checking the progress of processing in Xinjiang, told reporters that Yinfeng used to conduct business across the country, but now the entire acquisition and processing business is placed in Xinjiang.

In order to stabilize cotton production, various departments of the national cotton trading market have worked closely together to promote and implement the "professional warehousing supervision + in-warehouse notarization inspection" work in Gansu Province. As of November 30, 2021, the reserved cotton storage volume is 13,800 tons, and the annual storage volume is expected to exceed 20,000 tons.

Stabilizing quality: Precision management pays off

In 2021, Xinjiang cotton was affected by cold air in the early growth stage, and its growth and development was later than in 2020, and its growth was weak; the weather was good from June to August , the growth trend has changed from weak to strong or even better than in 2020. The harvest basically ended at the end of November, and the yield per unit area was worse than expected.

Judging from the China Cotton Association’s survey of national cotton production at the end of November 2021, the total production was slightly lower than the previous period because the yield per unit area was lower than previously expected. Liu Shuang revealed that judging from the statistical data collected by the National Cotton Quality Monitoring Center, Xinjiang's cotton output in 2021 will decrease compared with the previous year.

Although the weather affected the output, it did not reduce the quality. The quality of Xinjiang cotton in 2021 has improved significantly compared with the previous year. According to statistics from the China Fiber Quality Monitoring Center, the color grade, length, breaking strength, micronaire value, length uniformity and other indicators of Xinjiang cotton have all improved significantly compared with the same period in 2020.