NCC Chairman dismayed at cotton industry's demand crisis
28 Sep '05
4 min read
National Cotton Council (NCC) Chairman Woods Eastland challenged the world's cotton-producing countries to produce global demand for the fiber by five million bales per year for the next five years.
He told attendees at the 64th International Cotton Advisory Committee's (ICAC) 64th Plenary Meeting here that the only reason that goal seems unachievable is lack of confidence by those countries' in their ability to apply the right tools and the right financing to the task.
Or, maybe they are just lacking imagination and the willingness to work together toward a mutually worthwhile goal. What they are now doing is fighting each other desperately for market share because their production potential is growing much more rapidly than the demand for their fiber.
Eastland, who is a cotton producer and Chief Executive Officer of Staplcotn Cooperative Association in Greenwood, Mississippi, said the US cotton industry is convinced that the ICAC is correct in its assessment of the impact of cotton promotions thus far. The ICAC estimated that had it not been for promotion over time, such as that of Cotton Incorporated and the NCC's export promotion arm, Cotton Council International (CCI), the world of cotton in 2005 would be lacking around 12 million bales of demand – or roughly one tenth of the total demand for cotton on an annual basis. However, he noted that according to USDA, had cotton's global market share of fiber consumption held onto its 1990 level, and then the world would be consuming an additional 26 million bales of cotton annually today.
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