Good News for Ports. Good News for Cotton!
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I'm Haylie Shipp.
Good news for our ports. Good news for our cotton.
The Biden Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation did recently announce that $450 million in grant funds had been made available to expand port capacity.
Reece Langley who is the vice president of Washington operations for the National Cotton Council says this is good for cotton...
"As we've been through this COVID pandemic and the supply chain and logistical challenges that it has presented, cotton has been at the forefront of many of those challenges particularly since we are such an export dependent commodity with over 80% of our cotton being exported annually."
Market disruption issues are also getting attention from the USDA...
"They recently announced allocation of some funding that they are using to address some market disruption issues particularly at the ports. Initially they have announced an agreement with the Port of Oakland to help facilitate it adding some additional container storage yards. And we're hopeful that something like that can be expanded to other ports particularly some that are more heavily utilized for the export of cotton."
And a reminder, the deadline for cotton growers to enroll and complete data entry for the 21/22 crop for the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol is March 31.
