DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania expects its 2009/10 cotton crop to fall 32 percent to 250,000 tonnes as farmers turn to other crops because of low prices on the world market, Tanzania's agriculture minister said on Tuesday 21 July.

"Cotton production has deteriorated much more compared with other crops. It's expected that cotton production will drop from 368,229 tonnes in 2008/09 to 250,000 tonnes in 2009/10," Agriculture Minister Stephen Wassira told parliament.

Wassira said unlike other longer maturing cash crops, cotton allowed farmers to adapt quickly to alternatives when price conditions became unsuitable.

The world economic slowdown has hit demand and prices for cotton along with other commodities such as coffee.

"It's easy for a cotton farmer to decide to cultivate it or not, depending on price conditions. Due to that, cotton production has deteriorated more compared with other crops," the minister said while presenting his ministry's budget.

Tanzania produced 200,665 tonnes of cotton in the 2007/08 (Nov-Aug) season.

Tanzania's Cotton Board says 98 percent of the crop grows in seven regions in western Tanzania known as the western cotton growing areas, where the planting season starts in November.

Most of these areas are semi-arid and cotton is the main cash crop. Most farmers grow cotton on pieces of land that average 1-2 hectares each season, according to the board.

Wassira said to help stem farmers' exodus from the crop, the government will give them an extra 80 shillings per kg of cotton in 2009/10, raising the price to 440 shillings per kg.

Separately, he said the country expected to harvest 10.92 million tonnes of food in 2008/09, of which 5.27 million tonnes would be grains. Demand for grains stood at 6.5 million tonnes.

Wassira said due to insufficient rains in some parts of the country, the food harvest had fallen short of their targets, especially for grains.

He said to prevent any shortages and to help keep prices low, the government intended to buy 165,000 tonnes of grain locally for sale at subsidised prices in affected areas.

Earlier this year Tanzania stopped issuing food export permits, a measure Wassira reiterated.

"The government will keep in place the suspension of food exports until the situation improves," he said.

Tanzania has a less acute problem than neighbouring Kenya, where the government has said 10 million people affected by drought would need food aid.

By George Obulutsa