ACSA 2011 CONFERENCE PREVIEW: May 12
April 20, 2011 Thursday, May 12
7:30 AM Industry Update Breakfast
Frank Lucas (R – Ok.), House Agricultural Committee Chairman
Ed Zaninelli, Vice President of Westbound Transpacific Trade, Orient Overseas Container Line
11:00 AM Political and Policy Forum
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
6:30 PM Reception at Woodrow Wilson Home, Embassy Row
In what should be one of the most eagerly anticipated sessions, Lucas will discuss the 2012 Farm Bill and its potential impact on cotton. “Mr. Lucas is from Oklahoma and has a good amount of cotton in his district,” Lea says, “and that’s important to us because we wanted someone who considers cotton an important crop.”
Beginning with last year’s meeting, ACSA has been trying to put more emphasis on the logistical side of the business in an effort to make the United States the top service provider in the cotton industry, Lea says. The association has made a concerted effort to get every major company to put someone on ACSA’s Warehouse, Ocean Transportation and Logistics Committee to help unify the voice of the cotton trade. That’s because disaster often follows a failure in logistics.
“Many deals are done on letter of credit (L/C) terms, and if you can’t get your cotton out of the warehouse, or if you can’t get equipment to the port to get your shipment on a vessel, you can’t adhere to the sales contract as it’s written,” Lea says. “Committing ourselves to upgrading logistics operations helps protect our members from potential defaults and generally makes the United States a more attractive trading partner.”
In the Political and Policy Forum, Sen. Chambliss, is the former Chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee. Georgia is the second-largest cotton producing state in the country, and Savannah is the second-largest port for cotton exports, so once again, ACSA was targeting political figures for whom cotton has great importance.
“As an elected official since 1994 (he moved from house to Senate in 2002), Sen. Chambliss is a veteran of the farm bill process many times over,” Lea says. “He is also one of ‘the gang of six,’, a bipartisan group of negotiators that is working on a deficit reduction plan. As a result of his extensive work on both the deficit and the Farm Bill, he will be able to offer real insight on the future of government’s role in agriculture.”
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