How to reduce the cost of cotton cultivation? A Case Study of Xinjiang, China

The competitiveness of cotton in Xinjiang, China's largest cotton-growing region, is declining due to rising cultivation costs. The purpose of this paper is to find strategies to reduce the cost of cotton cultivation by analyzing the relationship between material cost and profit and comparing the cost of hand-picked cotton and machine-picked cotton. The results showed that under 5% significance, the net profit of Xinjiang had a negative correlation with chemical fertilizers and pesticides and a positive correlation with farm manure. In 2018, the total cost of cotton picking by machine in Xinjiang was 35.85% lower than that by hand. In the future, Xinjiang cotton cultivation should reduce the input of chemical fertilizer and pesticide, increase the input of agricultural fertilizer; at the same time, promote mechanical cotton harvesting, accelerate the construction of integrated system of mechanical cotton harvesting technology, achieve the goal of reducing costs and increasing profits, and improve the competitiveness of Xinjiang cotton.