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Polypropylene Bagging, Wire Ties And Module Averaging In The Spotlight During the National Cotton Council’s Mid-Year Board meeting, a Strategic Planning Task Force met to develop a plan to help our industry address the competitive landscape and challenges we face. The task force made a number of recommendations, and all are important, but in this article, we will discuss the three that have the most direct impact on ginners. The three recommendations I would like to bring to your attention are as follows: 1) Work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Marketing Service to establish module averaging as the only approach for classing cotton. 2) The Joint Cotton Industry Bale Packaging Committee should establish a phase-out period for woven polypropylene bagging while investigating options for a more durable polyethylene bag and a lighter-weight cotton bag. 3) The JCIBPC should establish a phase-out period for wire ties. Each of these recommendations will be discussed in January during the Beltwide Cotton Conferences by the National Cotton Ginners’ Association Technology Committee. In addition, these recommendations will also be addressed at the NCC’s annual meeting in February. After these discussions, the next steps for recommendations would be up to the USDA for the
module averaging and the JCIBPCommittee for the other two recommendations. Woven PP Bagging Issue Of these three recommendations, the most controversial one is probably the phase-out of woven polypropylene (woven PP) bagging. The U.S. cotton industry still uses a good bit of woven PP bagging — 46% of the crop in 2023, 77% in Texas — so this recommendation will likely come with a defined, significantly appropriate phase-out period. The primary driver is that for years our textile customers have complained about contamination from PP bagging materials, and those complaints have only gotten worse. In fact, Cotton Council International indicates it is the biggest complaint from our textile customers. Additionally, China remains the largest export destination for U.S. cotton and their internal policy prohibits the use of woven “plastic” bagging materials and other plastics that contaminate. The fear continues that at any time, this policy could be applied to U.S. bales. It should be noted that our largest export competitors, Brazil and Australia, are packaging 100% of their
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