Cotton Marketing and Business Veteran Sees Challenges – and Promise – Ahead for 2014

With a new Farm Bill firmly in hand, Wallace (Wally) Darneille knows that the work is just beginning.

Darneille was elected chairman of the National Cotton Council (NCC) for 2014 during the association’s recent annual meeting, succeeding Jimmy Dodson, a Robstown, TX, cotton producer.

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For the past decade, Darneille has served as president and chief executive officer of Plains Cotton Cooperative Association (PCCA), a member-owned cooperative based in Lubbock, TX, with interests in cotton marketing, warehousing, software development and services, denim production in Texas and apparel production in Guatemala.

Managing a business with fingers in so many cotton-related pies is not easy. But with Darneille’s background and experience in multiple segments of the U.S. and global cotton industry, he is uniquely qualified to lead NCC into what’s ahead in 2014.

He admits that most of items on the NCC to-do list revolve around the new Farm Bill.

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“We’re glad to have the Farm Bill done,” said Darneille, “and we’re going to stay very busy this year as we try to implement what’s been written. It’s been a multi-year effort that involved a lot of people and resolved a lot of issues.

“But getting the bill passed was one thing,” he stated. “The implementation is going to be quite difficult as well. It involves writing new regulations, as well as new types of insurance policies that have never existed before. And we still have various issues to resolve, including continuing discussions with the Brazilians. We believe the issues they were concerned about were resolved by the way the STAX program was written, and we look forward to finalizing those negotiations and moving ahead.

“I’m looking forward to a challenging year. We’re confident we can find a way forward that will allow cotton growers to go out and start making their plans for the next five years.”

Darneille has a long record of service to the cotton industry and NCC. Prior to joining PCCA, he was senior vice president of Weil Brothers Cotton Inc. in Montgomery, AL, where, for 30 years, he managed a variety of global cotton merchandizing operations. He served this past year as NCC vice chairman and was the chairman of Cotton Council International (CCI) in 2011, after serving as its president in 2010.

He was the 2007 president of the International Cotton Association in Liverpool, England – the first American to hold that position. He has also served as chairman of the National Council of Textile Organizations, president of the Texas Cotton Association, a member of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, and as a board member of CCI, the American Cotton Shippers Association, the Texas Agricultural Coop Council, Telmark, Denimatrix and The Seam.

With U.S. cotton acreage projected to climb modestly in 2014, Darneille feels good about the prospects for growers and their crop.

“We’re hearing from people that cotton is an attractive crop versus other options,” he said. “I think people are excited about it. Certainly, in Texas, if we have moisture, we’ll see a lot of cotton acreage. I was pleased that our growers we were able to produce some very good yields on irrigated land last year. The crop we did have made our gins healthier, and I think that growers around the country are pretty optimistic right now.

“Cotton certainly looks profitable today.”

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