Connection Spring 2016 | Page 12

I Cottonrecap By Sally Andel t has been a rough patch for cotton lately. It is hard to sugarcoat the actions of the recent cotton market sessions. The ag secretary decided not to delegate cottonseed as an oil seed. This had virtually no impact on the markets. They are actively working to resolve this and will hopefully emerge with a positive solution. The National Cotton Council recently released its initial estimate for the 2016 U.S. planting intentions at 9.1 million acres. This is up 6.2 percent from 2015. At this time, all crops are having price difficulties. In some cases, cotton is considered the “least bad” crop to plant. There are approximately 100 million bales of cotton on stock in the world. China has more than 50 million bales in reserves and more than 10 million in free stock. China has a new government and no longer wants large stocks of cotton. It is working to reduce its reserve and will have to sell at huge losses. According to analysis, China has cut 2.4 million acres of cotton and production will continue to fall because they cannot grow cotton economically. India has also lowered its cotton acreage. Turnout Avg. Loan Not Specified Americot 1535 CG 3787 B2RF Cropland 3520 Cropland 3787 Delta Pine 1518 Delta Pine 1522 DP 1048 B2RF DP 1133 B2RF DP 1219 B2RF DP 1252 B2RF DP 1359 B2RF Fibermax Fibermax 955 LLB