It is usually customary to begin a presentation like this with a joke, but this is not the year for joking. It would set the wrong tone for a meeting which finds all of us with serious problems. I even have trouble with the theme of this meeting - Management - Key to Profits in the 1980's. I would rather rephrase it as "Management - Key to Survival in the 1980's."

I have been assigned the topic, "United States and World Cotton Outlook.' I felt very comfortable with this nice, broad subject at the end of November, when I was so kindly asked by the National Cotton Council to present this paper. It is quite usual for us to take a look 12 to 18 months ahead at the beginning of December each year.

Then along came Secretary Block and his PIK Program to reduce acreage which can, in the way it is administered, radically (change the outlook for better or for worse. I will discuss the PIK Program later, but it has limited the scope of the word 'outlook.'

I will, therefore, try to tell you where I think we are today, how we got there, analyze the problem, and then perhaps when the PIK Program details are known, you can arrive at some of your own judgments.

Cotton's problems today@, are more complex than at any time in my memory. They are more complex because we are an integral part of the world scene. We are buffeted, shaken up by the world political and financial situation as much as we are by the law of supply and demand.

While you sit here and talk about the low price you are receiving for your cotton or your inability to market it other than to the government loan, your customers in Western Europe and Japan are paying the highest prices for U. S. cotton either in history or certainly in the last twelve months. Yes, your customers are paying the highest prices they probably have ever paid for your cotton because they are paying for it in their own currency, whose value has decreased appreciably, particularly in the last year. Many farmers in your competing countries are receiving the highest prices they have ever received for their cotton because of the weakness of their currencies. We here are paying the price for a strong America.