The National Cotton Council released the results from its annual Early Season Planting Intentions survey on Thursday, forecasting a second consecutive decline in planted acres for the crop.
The survey, which covers 17 states across the U.S. cotton belt, showed 8.99 million acres of all cotton are expected to planted, a 293,000 acre decrease from last season. Upland cotton is expected to decline from 9.141 million acres to 8.829 million. Arkansas saw the sharpest decline of all states surveyed, with a 30% decline in acreage from 520,000 acres last year to 362,000 this year. Similar but slightly less severe losses were also observed in the neighboring states of Missouri, Mississippi, and Tennessee, highlighting the continued shift to alternative crops available to farmers in those regions.
“History has shown that U.S. farmers respond to relative prices when making planting decisions,” said Dr. Jody Campiche, NCC vice president of economics and policy analysis. “As compared to average futures prices during the first quarter of 2025, cotton prices during the 2026 survey period were almost the same, corn prices were slightly lower while soybean prices were slightly higher. As a result, the price ratio of cotton to corn was slightly higher and the price ratio of cotton to soybeans was lower than in 2025. Based on historical price relationships and the small change in price ratios, this would generally suggest little to no change in cotton acreage.”
Last year’s fall in planted acres came after a 2024 uptick to 11.2 million acres. Producers planted 13.7 million acres as recently as 2017 and 14.1 million acres in 2018, according to USDA.
The NCC report comes ahead of USDA’s March Planting Intentions report, which is typically given more weight by traders. However, the NCC survey remains a valuable insight in to how farmers are thinking about acreage decisions in the coming growing season.