Lea Reminisces on Second Term as ACSA President
May 27, 2011 For Jordan Lea, life in the cotton business is even better the second time around.
Lea completed his second term as president of the American Cotton Shippers Assn. (ACSA) at the close of its 87th Annual Convention at the Four Seasons Hotel, in Washington D.C., May 11-13.
“It was a rising tide, so it’s been an exciting second year,” Lea says. “I was lucky enough to have been at the helm when cotton went from south of a dollar to over $2. The downside is that it creates a demand on your time. My family and business partner, Phil Canale, have been very patient. It’s been great, and I guess that’s what it should be. I don’t know if I’d recommend to anyone that they do it for two years again, but I would recommend that they do it for one year if they got the chance.
“It’s been a helluva’ experience. Selfishly, this price move has given me huge opportunities,” he continues. “I had the opportunity to make a presentation to the International Textile Manufacturers Federation at the National Retail Federation meeting. I spoke at a forum in New York on price volatility organized by the ICAC (International Cotton Advisory Committee) at the request of the World Bank. There were 30 Ministers of Commerce from all over the world there; countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Argentina and Brazil. It seemed like all of the countries that produce cotton, or consume it, were there. One thing I talked about at the World Bank was that there is prosperity all the way through the chain. It doesn’t matter if you’re a producer or a ginner. The warehousemen have had it a little tougher because everybody is emptying out their warehouses. But it wasn’t a problem with volume – it was that cotton went through the warehouses so fast.”
Lea was invited to Bentonville, AR, to address executives at Wal-Mart concerning cotton prices. And he made his first Cotton Market Outlook presentation at the opening session of the National Cotton Council’s Beltwide Cotton Conferences last January.
“Gary Adams said before I came up here that nobody had ever addressed the Beltwide when cotton was $1.40,” Lea said at the time.
Adams is NCC Vice President of Economics are Policy Analysis.
“We have a prosperous cotton economy from field to fabric. It’s nice to go see people now,” Lea says. “When I was second vice president, we went to see some people and they were talking about the potential of default, or inability to honor a contract, or a customer who wouldn’t honor a contract. The people we visited were asking for help.”
But even as good as it has become, Lea says the cotton industry still has a few issues to address, such as problems with logistics, financial reform and continuing WTO issues.
Then there are some curious goings on in India – America’s most powerful competitor. “We’re still trying to find out what to do about the situation in India,” he explains. “The Indians are only banning exports because their business is so good.”
As Lea began his term as second vice president of ACSA in 2008, the cotton industry was sick, if not on life support. Prices had fallen below 50 cents and acreage was down to less than 9 million.
The cotton market and acreage started to rebound as he moved into his term as first vice president. But in one of his better dreams, could he have even envisioned what the cotton industry has become today?
“Absolutely not, especially where we were on a macroeconomic scale,” says Lea. “If you think about where the U.S. economy was, the banks weren’t interested in the business. Nobody wanted anything to do with cotton.
“We have all been talking about (U.S.) demand reaching 3 million bales – that was the benchmark. Now it’s closer to 4 million bales,” he continues. “One thing we do know now is exactly how much cotton we can use in the United States. We have chewed up every pound of cotton that we can.”
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