ICE Cotton falls for fifth straight month fall on trade woes

Aug 30 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures inched down on Friday in thin volume, due to lack of clarity in the U.S.-China trade negotiations, sending the natural fiber down for a fifth straight month. * Cotton contracts for December settled down 0.17 cent, or 0.29 %, at 58.83 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 58.46 and 59.3 cents a lb.

* Prices have fallen nearly 8% this month.

* "Cotton is falling because of lack of interest and trade (U.S -China negotiations) is not going anywhere, " said Sid Love, commodity trading adviser at Kansas-based Sid Love Consulting.

* "The trade war scenario is causing a lot of uncertainty and that is keeping speculative traders out," Love said.

* Prices had dropped to a 3-1/2 year low earlier this week and have declined nearly 20% so far this year as the U.S.-China trade war hurts demand.

* Also, recent rains in Texas, a major crop-producing state, are giving a boost to crop conditions previously impacted by extreme heat, traders said.

* Meanwhile, category 3 Hurricane Dorian is predicted to be near the Florida peninsula late on Monday.

* "Hurricane Dorian might cause some excitement over the coming sessions, but even if it were to affect crops in the Southeast, we don't see this changing the overall bearish scenario," British merchant Plexus Cotton said in a research note.

* Total futures market volume fell by 6,775 to 12,037 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 1,888 to 223,150 contracts in the previous session. (Reporting by Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Dan Grebler)