PERFORMANCE OF COTTON PRODUCTION AND EXPORT IN THE MAJOR PRODUCING COUNTRIES

The present investigation was conducted to study the growth rates and instability indices in production, area, productivity and export of cotton, the components of output growth and the relationship among production, export and price of cotton in the major cotton producing countries. To achieve the objectives, the secondary data related to area, production, productivity and export of the major cotton producing countries (China, India, USA, Pakistan, Brazil and Australia) were collected from different published sources covering a period of 29 years i.e.1980-81 to 2009-10. The analyses were carried out country wise separately for the five specific periods viz., overall study period (198081 to 2009-10), pre-liberalization period (1980-81 to 1993-94), post-liberalization period (1995-96 to 2009-10), pre-Bt introduction period (1995-96 to 2001-02) and post-Bt introduction period (2002-03 to 2009-10). The various statistical techniques were applied in the analyses viz., Exponential function for calculating compound growth rates of area, production, productivity and exports, Instability index model for estimating variability in production, area, productivity and exports, Decomposition analysis for measuring the relative contribution of area and yield to the total cotton output change and a Pearson's correlation coefficient and other regression techniques used to examine the relationship among production, export and price. The compound growth rate results revealed that during the overall study period (1980-81 to 2009-10), India recorded the highest growth (4.59 per cent) in production followed by Australia (4.39 per cent), Pakistan (3.18 per cent), Brazil (2.94 per cent), China (2.42 per cent) and USA (1.06 per cent). This suggests that cotton production in India was the fastest growing in the world during 1980-81 to 2009-10.