China'S Local Textile Machinery Picks Cotton Difficultly To Improve Quality And Competitiveness

With spin As the industry moves westward, Xinjiang is completing the transformation from a planting base to a textile industrial base, and building an important high-quality textile production base in China. The dance of Xinjiang's cotton industry will undoubtedly be more enthusiastic.

However, cotton farmers have no way of knowing how the changes in futures and industrial policies have stirred the cotton industry, but the changes around them have dragged them into a "cotton tango" that is hard to refuse.

How to dance the cotton tango?

In the past five years, Fan Youxin, a cotton farmer in northern Xinjiang, has lived like a dream tango.

After the cotton price downturn in 2009, the cotton price of Zhengzhou Futures Exchange reached 23932 yuan/ton in 2010, the highest record in China in 10 years. Just as Fan Youxin was preparing to expand the planting area in the next year, cotton prices plummeted in 2011. Since then, the state has implemented the policy of supporting the market to purchase and store, and cotton prices have tended to stabilize.

Now it is the cotton harvest season again. Although Xinjiang is a major cotton producing region, and its cotton output accounts for more than 50% of the country's total, in the context of the inverted cotton price, the high price difference between domestic and foreign cotton has made it increasingly difficult for local textile enterprises to survive in Xinjiang's cotton mountains. From an economic point of view, Xinjiang's cotton industry is at a low profit point of the "smile curve" because of the price of cotton and the relatively single mode of production and supply.

Upstream: the last mile of mechanization

Difficult implementation of local machine picking cotton

Fan Youxin, 50, opened his eyes.

On October 15, the roaring machine ran back and forth in Dongdu Haoxi Village, Dalet Town, Bole City. He and his wife are the only people in the 100 mu cotton field.

In this village where machine cotton picking was used for the first time, only the elderly and children are left, and young people have left home to work.

Fan Youxin said that in the past, at least ten flower pickers were needed. Taking 350 kg of seed cotton per unit area as an example, manual flower picking costs 2 yuan per kg, so manual flower picking costs 700 yuan, while machine picking costs only 200 yuan, with a difference of 500 yuan.

In his more than 20 years of farming career, cotton planting and harvesting are gradually getting rid of the traces of artificial.

It is understood that the cotton planting area in Xinjiang this year is 16.55 million mu, and with the area of the Corps, it is estimated that the planting area in Xinjiang will be 23 million to 24 million mu.

Ding Weidong, director of the Agricultural Mechanization Management Office (Mechanized Cotton Harvesting Office) of the Agricultural Bureau (Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau, Forestry Bureau) of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, said that this year, the cotton machinery harvesting area of the Corps will continue to increase, and will exceed 5.2 million mu, accounting for 58.9% of the cotton planting area of the Corps. At the end of the 12th Five Year Plan, the cotton picking by machine of the whole corps will reach more than 80%.

However, the promotion of local machine-made cotton is very difficult. Jarheng Ilias, the chief of the Economic Crops Section of the Autonomous Region Agricultural Technology Popularization Station, said that this was due to the lack of uniform standards on the purchase price. Machine picking of cotton will shorten the length of cotton fiber, and every millimeter of change will affect the quality of cotton, thus affecting the price, that is, the so-called difference is a thousand miles away.

At present, all parts of Xinjiang are exploring the purchase standard of machine cotton picking. Bole City, where Fan Youxin is located, will save 0.5 yuan per kilogram of machine picked cotton to subsidize the workshop and equipment transformation of processing enterprises. This is not only the concern of Jarheng Ilias alone. At the "2013 Cotton Outlook Forum" held in July this year, experts suggested that the purchase and processing standards of machine-made cotton should be introduced as soon as possible to support the machine-made cotton industry.

Changji, more than 400 kilometers away from Fan Youxin's home, has used GPS positioning to sow seeds this year. Since then, Xinjiang cotton has achieved a comprehensive mechanized operation from sowing to harvesting.

Jiaerheng Ilias introduced that GPS positioning sowing means 300 mu of cotton is sowed every day, the vertical error of 1000 meter long sowing line is not more than 2 cm, and the accuracy rate of jointing is 2.5 cm. "At a glance, it is like soldiers lining up, and it is not easy to damage seedlings in field management".

This not only creates conditions for mechanized picking, but also saves costs.

Middle reaches: cotton grading

Improve quality and competitiveness

This year, Fan Youxin's average cotton yield per mu is 260 kg (seed cotton). Affected by the climate, the cotton output in Xinjiang is slightly lower than that of last year. This means that even if mechanization is realized, if you want to expand the income, the cotton processing quality needs to be improved urgently.

In the office of Wang Xinjiang, secretary of the National Cotton Engineering Technology Research Center, there is a sketch map of cotton planting in Xinjiang, which can clearly reflect the cotton planting situation in Xinjiang. Bole, where Fan Youxin lives, is covered with purple.

According to the national cotton advantageous regional layout plan, 11 prefectures in Xinjiang are planned to be three major cotton advantageous regions in the south, north and east, including Bazhou, Akesu, Kashi, Kezhou, Hotan and other places, focusing on the construction of high-quality upland cotton and long staple cotton regions in the south and high-quality upland cotton regions in the north and east of Xinjiang.

At the end of harvest, Fan Youxin sent the seed cotton to the ginning plant and turned it into lint, which was then collected and stored by the state and sold to textile enterprises.

Li Haobin, a researcher of Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences who has long been engaged in the research of cotton pest control, said that cotton is actually a perennial plant, and only with its continuous maturity and harvest can it achieve similar quality (the same length, color and maturity). However, "we collect and put them together according to a time and quarter, which makes it difficult to distinguish cotton mills and the quality distinction is not obvious, affecting the spinning quality".

The current situation is that most cotton purchases are mixed income. From September 1, the purchase of reserve cotton will follow the new standard. The new standard pays more attention to the internal quality of cotton. Now the color level is implemented. There are 13 levels and 4 types, which is broader than the previous standard.

According to the statistics of the Economic and Information Commission of Xinjiang Autonomous Region, from January to August this year, half of the textile enterprises above designated size in Xinjiang suffered losses. For nearly three years, Xinjiang textile enterprises could not afford to use Xinjiang cotton, pointing to the cotton storage policy.

In fact, since 1993, Xinjiang's cotton area, yield per unit area, total output, quality and export volume have all remained the first in China. The transfer out volume has always been above 60%. All this shows that Xinjiang has rich cotton resources.

The general idea of Xinjiang cotton production is that the total investment in the construction of Xinjiang's "12th Five Year Plan" high-quality cotton base is 1.413 billion yuan, stabilizing the cotton area at about 25 million mu, maintaining the total output at about 3 million tons, and reaching an average yield of 125 kg per unit area.

Wang Xinjiang believes that at present, the lint yield per mu can reach up to 200 kg, and there is little room for excavation. He used the "smile curve" to interpret the cotton industry.

This curve, which is similar to a smiling mouth, is composed of technology and patents from left to right. The middle section is for assembly and manufacturing, and the right section is for brands and services. The curve represents profit. The smile curve is low profit in the middle section, and high profit in the left and right sections.

Unfortunately, Xinjiang is in the middle of the "smile curve".

Downstream: transformation of cotton industry

Increase cotton added value

The above shows that although Xinjiang is a textile clothing It is a big raw material province, but since the reform and opening up more than 30 years ago, it has always been selling low value-added products.

Wang Yanping, secretary-general of Xinjiang Cotton Association, analyzed that Xinjiang's cotton industry chain was too short, resulting in a large amount of loss of added value. The cotton farmers have worked hard for more than half a year and sent it to the ginning plant. After rough processing, it is directly sold to the mainland, while the mainland enterprises that spin cotton into yarn, weave cotton into cloth, and make clothes eat up the profits of cotton layer by layer.

Increasing the added value has become a breakthrough for Xinjiang's cotton industry to break through the bottleneck.

Wang Xinjiang and his peers discussed that they hoped to provide special cotton for the development of textile and clothing industry through the transformation of planting base to textile industrial base. In turn, further drive the production of raw materials and promote each other.

This is similar to Xinjiang Yiliqi Clothes & Accessories The vision of the chairman of Culture Development Co., Ltd., Duo Likong, coincides.

What impressed him about the clothing industry in the mainland was the mature industrial chain. From the raw material market, specialized auxiliary material market, various equipment including knitting, to the related professional training market, "even a zipper has a corresponding manufacturer to complete it for you".

In his view, the above shortcomings have weakened the competitiveness of Xinjiang's cotton industry in the domestic and international markets, made it more vulnerable to the impact of the international market, and put cotton producers and operators in a passive position.

To Wang Xinjiang's surprise, the Outline of the Plan for Vigorously Developing the Textile and Clothing Industry to Promote the Employment of Millions of People (2014-2020) has been completed. According to the plan, by 2020, the total industrial value of the textile and clothing industry in the region will reach 163.5 billion yuan.

According to the plan, the industry will be driven by the market, and "two cities, seven parks and one center" will be built: the two cities include Shihezi Textile Industrial City, Aksu Textile Industrial City, seven parks and Urumqi International Textile Trade Center. And gradually improve the industrial chain, develop the textile industry with national characteristics, and build the Western Xinjiang Garment Industrial Park. Give full play to the advantages of the long staple cotton base and form differentiated competition with the mainland.

This makes Fan Youxin, who shuttles between cotton fields, a little excited. He used to "dance" with others. When the tango sounds next year, he at least knows whether to move forward or backward.

Conclusion

The cotton industry will abandon time-consuming manual picking and realize mechanized planting, which is only the first step of the cotton industry reform. Today, our series of reports come to an end.

Three "Xinjiang in the Cotton Field" series reports show the problems faced by the largest high-quality cotton production base in China. In the global cotton industry system, Xinjiang cotton industry still needs more thinking and practice.