Drought devastates US cotton crop

Southwest cotton growers are abandoning millions of parched acres they planted in the spring, forecasting the weakest U.S. crop in more than a decade and sending prices soaring.

U.S. agricultural forecasters expect drought-stricken farmers to abandon more than 40% of the 12.5 million acres they have sown to cotton and harvest the smallest acreage since reconstruction. Back then, in 1868, yields per acre were less than a fifth of what they are today, but the market for cotton was also much smaller.