Staplcotn’s Woods Eastland Retires

After serving as President and CEO for the past 24 years, Woods E. Eastland, of Indianola, MS, has retired from Staple Cotton Cooperative Association (Staplcotn) and Staple Cotton Discount Corporation (Stapldiscount) as of September 15, 2010.

Founded in 1921, Staplcotn is the oldest cotton marketing cooperative in the United States and has its home office in Greenwood, Mississippi. Staplcotn currently has more than 13,000 farm accounts in an 11-state area in the Mid-South and Southeast and a warehousing operation with 14 locations in four states.

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Eastland has been involved with Staplcotn and Stapldiscount, the lending arm and wholly owned subsidiary of Staplcotn, since 1977 when he was first elected to serve on its board of directors as a farmer from Sunflower County, MSi. In 1981, Eastland was elected Chairman of the Board and served in that capacity until 1986. The board then hired Eastland to serve as its President and CEO.

Eastland’s service and dedication to the company is far from over, however. For the first time in Staplcotn’s 89-year history, a former Board Chairman, turned President and CEO, has been reinstated as Board Chairman. Eastland replaces Ben Lamensdorf of Cary, MS, who also retired on September 15 after serving as its chairman since 2003.

Selected by the board to take over the position of President and CEO is Meredith Allen of Greenwood,
MS, formerly Executive Vice President of Staplcotn and Stapldiscount. Allen joined Staplcotn in 1985 as
the head of the domestic sales department. Within a year, he was promoted to the Vice President of Marketing and held that position until 2008 when he was named to the Executive Vice President position.

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Allen has been responsible for directing all marketing activities in domestic and foreign markets as well as developing new markets.

Allen is past president and past chairman of Cotton Council International, the export promotion arm of the National Cotton Council of America. He also has served on the cotton committee of the National Council of Textile organizations, is a director of the National Cotton Council and holds the position of director for Delta Council. Allen has also served as a board member and chairman of the Memphis Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, MS.
 

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