But Cenex Harvest States, America's largest farmer-owned cooperative, recently reported a 71% fall in earnings in the first half of its fiscal year the result, it claimed, of high oil prices and continued weakness in agricultural markets.

ECONOMIST: Farming

Brazil, also a competing cotton producer, believes that this combination of US agricultural subsidies and over-production has resulted in the dumping of American cotton on the world markets, depressing world prices.

BBC: South Africans cut their cloth