“Two Cultures” on Display in Singapore and New Orleans

By Jim.Robinson|May 29, 2013

“We’re farmers and so we farm, and if there is no market for cotton, we’ll grow corn.” Mr. Adrian Moguel y Anza, Chairman and CEO, Libero Commodities SA, speaking at the 2013 Global Summit sponsored by Cotton International in Singapore, March 20-22, 2013.

“We are members of the cotton industry and always will be.” Mr. Billy Dunavant, speaking at the annual convention of the American Cotton Shippers Association, New Orleans, USA, May 10, 2013.

Could there possibly be a starker contrast in normative values between two cotton industry leaders or a stronger example of the “Two Cultures” contending in the cotton industry today? One statement represents the attitudes and beliefs of an expanding exporter in an emergent country, a new generation of entrepreneur, a company with commercial interests in cotton but not cultural commitments. The other statement represents the normative values of an established shipper, an aging businessman, trying to maintain relevance in a mature industry where the status quo is held dear and cotton itself is an identity, not a business.

Transparency, collaboration, standardization, support for market promotion and research, and adherence to trade rules are normative values assumed to be self-evident by Mr. Dunavant’s generation and the industry he represented.

As with all transitions, the cotton industry is experiencing dissonance associated with cultural change. As newly ascendant cotton economies mature and their legal systems are strengthened, trade facilitation will occur. Whether the normative values that have anchored the cotton industry for two centuries will prevail will depend on whether new leaders in world cotton trade adopt the values of transparency, collaboration and commitment to industry growth that marked the industry during the 1800s and 1900s.