West Africa: Cotton To Drop

Avatar for Matt Hopkins By Scott C. Lucas|18 October 2007

Both area and production will be down for the coming crop season, most notably for Mali and Burkina Faso. Current forecasts from the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service (USDA-FAS) demonstrate declines of around 20% compared to 2006/07.

While donor and government commitments to support the sector remain high, they were not sufficient to encourage farmers to expand or even maintain cotton areas planted. Financing problems for inputs and crop purchases continue to hurt production potential across West Africa as a whole.

Benin is the only country which has potential to increase its production compared to 2006/07.