Cotton growers in the Southwest are giving up millions of acres of parched land they planted in the spring, sending forecasts for the worst U.S. harvest in more than a decade and sending prices sharply higher.
US agricultural forecasters expect Farmers suffer from drought leaves more than 40% of the 12.5 million acres they sow and harvest in the smallest area since reconstruction. Back then, in 1868, the yield per acre was less than a fifth of what it is today, but the cotton market was also much smaller.
