Cotton
Cotton is a warm-season shrub grown for the fibre around its seed. It needs a long, hot, frost-free season and sunshine to ripen the bolls, which is why it belts the subtropics — the US South, the Indus and Ganges plains, China's Xinjiang, and the Sahel.
How it grows
Cotton grows on a woody shrub, its fruit held above the ground.
What it’s worth to grow
Farm-gate value = the price farmers are paid per kilogram (FAOSTAT producer prices, median of 66 positive country-year observations spanning 2018–2024). It tracks how costly and labour-intensive a crop is to grow — almonds and vanilla command a premium; potatoes and cereals are cheap staples.
Where Earth's climate suits cotton
Climatic suitability only — scored for every 0.5° of the planet from this crop's temperature and rainfall tolerances (FAO EcoCrop) on AgroClim 1991–2025 normals (AgERA5 temperature, CHIRPS/ERA5 rainfall). It shows where the rain-fed climate permits the crop, not where it is grown today; irrigation lets many crops thrive in drier country than the map suggests (California, Egypt, the Indus and Nile).
Who grows it — and where the climate merely allows it
The climate where it grows
— mean monthly temperature ▍ monthly rainfall — averaged over the actual growing areas (the suitable cells) inside each country, so it reflects where the crop is really grown, not the national average. AgroClim 1991–2025 normals. The 🌧 badge is the last 3 months’ rainfall as a percentage of the 1991–2020 CHIRPS normal (through 2025-12) — the current drought/deluge signal.
Climate envelope · FAO EcoCrop
Deep bar = optimal range; pale bar = absolute tolerance. Beyond the pale bar the crop fails. Latitude tolerance ±47° · soil pH 5–9.5.
Growing calendar & hazards
Sown in spring into warm soil, it grows through a long hot summer and the bolls are picked in autumn — the season must be frost-free from planting to harvest.
- Drought. Though drought-hardy, rain-fed cotton on the dry margins swings hard with the rains.
- Frost. An early autumn frost stops the bolls opening and stains the lint.
- Wet harvest. Rain on open bolls downgrades the fibre; bollworm pressure rises in the heat.