Meetings Scheduled to Explain New Textile Division Structure

The addition of Denimatrix will require a re-structuring of PCCA’s Textile Division effective July 1, 2009. To help explain the new structure and how PCCA members can participate, a series of producer meetings have been scheduled throughout Texas and Oklahoma. The dates and locations of the meetings are:

June 3, 2009

June 4, 2009

June 5, 2009

June 9, 2009

June 10, 2009

June 11, 2009

The department raised domestic mill use 100,000 bales to 4.4 million. Despite the slowing economy, several factors are supporting domestic mill use including higher overseas transportation costs, the weaker dollar, and payments to mills included in the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008. Additionally, USDA’s export forecast was reduced 500,000 bales due to lower U.S. supplies and lower foreign import demand.

USDA’s world cotton projections for 2008-09 included lower beginning stocks, production, offtake, and ending stocks. World production was reduced approximately 1.5 million bales due mainly to reductions in India and the United States. The revision in India was based on lower reported planted area.

India, where the monsoon season is not arriving as producers there had hoped, is the U.S.’s largest cotton competitor and is working to make inroads to sell more cotton to China than American producers. The late monsoon season has resulted in a large number of unplanted acres, and a short crop in India could bode well for U.S. producers as world cotton supplies would tighten.

“If India’s cotton totals come up short, it could really make things volatile on the upside for prices to producers,” a market observer explained.

Cotton’s long-term price outlook remains very positive, according to many in the industry; however, no near-term burst in prices is expected. World cotton shortages certainly could affect global cotton prices, and the 2008 cotton season already has been fraught with adverse weather. The size of the world crop will remain a mystery almost until harvest begins. Until then, producers and analysts alike will, as they do most every year, have to “wait and see.”