The software dovetails with USDA's computerized classing mechanism – High Volume Instrument testing – which universally grades US cotton by fiber length, color and strength, the most uniform standard in the world.
“If the mill realizes that using HVI gives them a higher efficiency, they will buy that over cotton that doesn't have HVI,” Chewning said.
At the end of the 2005 marketing year on July 31, the world had 51.1 million bales of surplus cotton, 10 million more than the year before.
“The biggest problem cotton has in the world today is a demand problem,” said Woods Eastland, president of Greenwood, Miss.-based Staplcotn, the largest and oldest cotton cooperative in the United States. “Over the last 10 years, it has risen only a fraction of the demand for man-made fiber, primarily polyester.”
Cotton Inc is funded by a free producers pay on every bale they sell. The money is used to market US cotton around the world.
The use of EFS is growing fastest in the Far East, where textile mills are growing the fastest.
“We market only to mills using US cotton,” Chewning said. “The idea is to increase their consumption of US fiber.”
'The Commercial Appeal', Jane Roberts
marketing@alchempro.com
