Can We Laugh Out Loud Again?
May 27, 2011 “Cotton is the overcoat of a seed that is planted and grown in the South to keep the producer broke and the buyer crazy. The fiber varies in color and weight. And men who can guess the nearest length of a fiber are called cottonmen by the public, fools by the farmer, and poor businessmen by their creditors.
“The price of cotton is fixed in New York and goes up when you have sold, and down when you have bought. A buyer working for a group of mills was sent to New York to watch the cotton market. After a few days’ deliberation, he wired this to his firm: ‘Some think it will go up. Some think it will go down. I do, too. Whatever you do will be wrong. Act at once.’” – Unknown
Funny. Sometimes self-deprecating humor is just what it is – funny. But isn’t it fun for our industry to be able laugh out loud again?
In 2006, we had just under 15 million acres of cotton. By 2009, we had less than 9 million. So the question to two of the industry’s finest in this issue was this: “In your wildest imagination, could you have foreseen $2 cotton, the possibilty of 12.5 to 13 million acres, and a healthy, vibrant industry three years ago?”
“Absolutely not,” says National Cotton Council President and CEO Mark Lange on page 8.
“Absolutely not,” says Jordan Lea, of Eastern Trading Co. and president of the American Cotton Shippers Assn. on page 13.
There is no echo in here. They said exactly the same thing. And honestly, if you say you saw $2 cotton coming two years after it dipped below 50 cents, you’re Jon Lovitz’s fibbing Saturday Night Live character, Tommy Flanagan, who made it up as he went along. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The cover story this month is entitled, “The Sweet Summer of Surging U.S. Cotton. How the entire U.S. supply chain found itself in high cotton.” Beck Barnes came up with that. He’s good at that stuff and all. It’s about an industry that went from life support to rising like a Phoenix on steroids.
You may disagree, but I’ll take dollar cotton as Divine Intervention after what we just went through and run for the bank. Or beach. Two dollars would be nice, but you can book cotton well north of $1 right now. Act at once, many cotton economists advise.
Of course, there is always going to be an anxiety list. As we go to press, the only cotton planted is in South Texas. The High Plains and Rolling Plains areas are parched and will need a planting rain. The Mid-South and Southeast haven’t started. But we will always have our anxious moments from the time cotton is planted until the checks are cashed.
But I’m happy at this very moment. I think I’ll go get a beer and laugh out loud. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
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