My paper focuses on cotton production outside of the United States, reviewing briefly the current situation and highlighting some of the factors that are likely to be influential in the future. I will touch on prospects for next season. Our first world production forecast is in fact published in today's edition of the Cotton Outlook weekly magazine.
Subscribers can read the details now by downloading the publication from our website.
However, for your convenience, handouts containing the data have been made available for distribution at this meeting. A bit of a gamble Predicting the future is fraught with the danger that one becomes a hostage to fortune. It is a gamble. An interesting debate could focus on how such a claim might have changed given the influence of 'market forces' in China, or the destabilisation of the former monopoly control in West African states. The rapid turnaround of world prices since the beginning of January has required a smart rethink of what might happen during the coming season.