2024 Cotton Highlights

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

The farewells have been bid in Orlando, Florida, home of the recent National Cotton Council 2024 Annual Meeting. Coming out of that gathering, Dr. Jody Campiche, Vice President, Economics and Policy Analysis for the National Cotton Council provides highlights from the organization's latest Economic Report.

“Survey results indicate that 2024 U.S. cotton acreage will be 9.8 million acres or 3.7% lower than 2023. Growers are facing difficult planning decisions as revenue may fall short of production costs for many operations. Using average abandonment rates and yields, cotton belt harvested area totals 8.1 million acres for 2024 with a U.S. abandonment rate of 17.9%. This generates a cotton crop of 14.6 million bales with 14 million upland bales and 538,000 ELS bales. Between the survey period and mid-February, cotton prices have increased while corn and soybean prices have both declined. This has resulted in an increase in the cotton-to-corn and cotton-to-soybean price ratios. The recent improvement in the price ratios could result in final cotton acreage higher than reported in the NCC survey.”

That report was presented live at the annual meeting. Again, Jody Campiche.