Cotton Marketing News: Cotton Fundamentals Provide Reason for New Hope

Dec 14, 2021

By Don Shurley

Uncertainty and panic over the OMICRON variant caused the cotton market, along with many other commodities, to drop significantly in price over the past 2 weeks.

Cotton began this week to stabilize and try to “correct” to the possible over-reaction in prices. The “slide” halted on Dec 3rd, and since then has gained 289 points (2.89 cents) including a small -13 points today (March futures). The big gain was on Tuesday this week (281 points) and the market has varied around that level ever since. March futures closed at 106.59 today. New crop December 22 is currently at just under 90 cents (89.84 today).

cotton

The market needed something else (something good price-wise) to refocus on and let this OMICRON situation works it self out over time with more fact than emotions and uncertainty. Prices (March futures) now seem to be working mostly in the $1.04 to $1.10 area.

Today’s monthly USDA supply/demand report was neutral to slightly bullish for the price outlook. In summary:

The US crop was raised slightly to 12.28 million bales.
US exports and ending stocks for the 2021 crop year were unchanged from the November estimate.
World beginning stocks and production were lowered. The production forecast was lowered for Pakistan, raised for Turkey, but China was unchanged from last month’s estimate.
World Use was raised slightly—raised for Vietnam and Turkey, lowered for Pakistan, unchanged from last month for China and Bangladesh.
Projected imports for the 2021 crop year were lowered for China and Bangladesh, but increased for Pakistan and Vietnam.
World ending stocks for the 2021 crop year were lowered 1.2 million bales—lowered for Brazil, India, China, and Pakistan.

cotton

In summary, the US crop was raised slightly (80,000 bales), but there was no change in the projection for exports. Production for China was unchanged, but imports were lowered 250,000 bales. World Use/demand was raised slightly (170,000 bales), but Use for China was unchanged. World ending stocks for the 2021 crop marketing year were tightened by 1.2 million bales.

These numbers shouldn’t hurt the market and should be supportive. But, the numbers also aren’t going to cause a return to a strong bullish outlook either. These numbers should support cotton’s recent recovery, but the outlook for anything much higher is still guarded. We must remember that the run-up in price was largely speculatively driven. That bullish speculative buying has been eroded by OMICRON and demand uncertainty.

Today’s weekly export report (Dec 2) showed strong net sales of 401,400 bales. China and Vietnam were the major buyers. Shipments were 127,200 bales—up from previous weeks but still a relatively low level. Despite two neutral to slightly positive reports today, March futures closed slightly down. Both reports, however, should be supportive in the short term.

Source : ufl.edu

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.