WASDE: U.S. Cotton Forecast Includes Higher Beginning Stocks, Production, Exports, & Ending Stocks

Aug 10, 2018

COTTON: This month’s 2018/19 U.S. cotton forecast includes higher beginning stocks, production, exports, and ending stocks relative to last month. Production for the 2018 crop is raised 4 percent to 19.2 million bales, on this season’s first survey-based production forecast.

NASS’s survey indicates higher abandonment, but a higher average yield compared to last month’s expectations. Beginning stocks are raised 400,000 bales due to lower-than-expected 2017/18 exports and domestic consumption, and 2018/19 exports are 500,000 bales higher, at 15.5 million bales. Ending stocks are 600,000 bales higher this month. The midpoint of the marketing-year-average price is unchanged from last month, at 75 cents per pound.

Projected world 2018/19 ending stocks are down 1 percent this month, due to a combination of lower beginning stocks and higher consumption offsetting higher production. Beginning stocks are reduced 450,000 bales, reflecting both lower production and higher consumption estimates for 2017/18. Production in 2018/19 is increased 400,000 bales, with higher expected crops in the United States, Argentina, and Turkey offsetting reduced crops in Uzbekistan, Australia, and Turkmenistan. Consumption is raised 660,000 bales, led by a 300,000-bale increase for Pakistan, with smaller increases in Indonesia, Turkey, and other countries.

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”

WASDE: U.S. Cotton Forecast Includes Higher Beginning Stocks, Production, Exports, & Ending Stocks

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

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