NCC Elects Taylor As New Chairman

Sledge Taylor, a Como, Miss., ginner, was elected National Cotton Council chairman for 2015. Named during the NCC’s recent annual meeting in San Antonio, he succeeds Wallace L. Darneille, a Lubbock, Texas, cooperative marketer.

Sledge Taylor
Sledge Taylor

Taylor is president of the Como Consolidated Gin Co., Inc. in north Mississippi. He also is owner of Buckeye Farms, where he raises cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat, peanuts and cattle, and was named the Sunbelt Southeastern Farmer of the Year for Mississippi in 2004. Taylor has a long and distinguished NCC service record. He served as the NCC’s vice chairman in 2014 and was its secretary/treasurer from 2011 to 2013. He was a NCC director from 2007 to 2009 and chairman of the Cotton Foundation in 2012 and 2013, after serving as its president in 2011 and 2012. Taylor was president of the National Cotton Ginners Association in 2009. He is currently an active member of USDA’s Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee for Trade.

Taylor also has been active in regional, state and local organizations. He served as president of the Southern Cotton Ginners Association in 2002 and 2003 and was vice president of the Delta Council in 2001 and 2002. Among other posts, he currently serves as a commissioner for the Panola County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Panola-Tate Drainage District and is a board member for Delta Wildlife.

Taylor is a Mississippi State University graduate with a bachelor’s of science degree in Agricultural Engineering Technology and Business. He and his wife, Denise, have three sons.

Producers To Plant 9.4 Million Acres In 2015
U.S. cotton producers intend to plant 9.4 million acres of cotton this spring, down 14.6 percent from 2014, according to the National Cotton Council’s 32nd Annual Early Season Planting Intentions Survey. Upland cotton intentions are 9.2 million acres, down 15.2 percent from 2014, while extralong staple (ELS) intentions of 236,000 acres represent a 22.8 percent increase.

Dr. Gary Adams, the NCC’s vice president Economics & Policy Analysis, said, “Planted acreage is just one of the factors that will determine supplies of cotton and cottonseed. Ultimately, weather, insect pressure and agronomic conditions play a significant role in determining crop size.”

He said that with average abandonment for the United States at 12.8 percent, Cotton Belt harvested area totals 8.2 million acres. Weighting individual state yields by 2015 area generates a U.S. average yield per harvested acre of 817 pounds.

Dahlen Hancock
Dahlen Hancock

Hancock Elected CCI President
Dahlen K. Hancock, a Ropesville, Texas, producer, will serve as president of Cotton Council International (CCI) for 2015. Hancock, who moves up from CCI first vice president, succeeds Jordan Lea, a merchant with Eastern Trading Company in Greenville, S.C., who becomes CCI board chairman. Hancock has been farming for 35 years. He is a fourth generation farmer following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, who also chose farming as their professions.

For more information about the NCC Annual Meeting, view our special wrap-up report here.

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