India's Cotton Production

Imagine owning more farmland dedicated to a single crop than any other country in the world, and still not growing enough of that crop to satisfy your own domestic demand. That is genuinely India's position in cotton, India holds the single largest cotton cultivation area globally, roughly 114.84 lakh hectares, about 38% of the entire world's cotton-growing land, yet ranks only second in actual production, behind China, because Indian cotton yields per hectare lag well behind global averages.

The yield gap is the real story here, India's average cotton productivity runs around 450 kilograms of lint per hectare, against a government target of 800 to 900 kilograms, achievable through better irrigation, high-yielding varieties and modern farm practices, meaning the land-area advantage alone hasn't translated into a proportional production advantage, a genuinely large, addressable inefficiency rather than a fixed constraint.

This yield gap creates a real domestic supply problem, 2025-26 production of roughly 290.91 lakh bales falls well short of domestic consumption estimated at around 328 lakh bales across MSME, non-MSME and non-textile segments, a structural deficit of roughly 37 lakh bales that has to be met through cotton imports, a genuinely uncomfortable position for a country that grows more cotton land than anyone else on earth.

Every time an Indian spinning mill has to import raw cotton rather than sourcing it domestically, that's this exact yield gap showing up as a real cost and supply-chain decision, and it's precisely why closing the gap between India's cotton area and its cotton yield remains one of the most consequential, if less headline-grabbing, priorities for the entire textile value chain covered elsewhere on this site.