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USDA, NCC reschedule West African meeting
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) Administrator Ellen Terpstra announced that a December meeting aimed at furthering cooperative ties between the United States and the West African countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali, has been postponed.
USDA said the conference of USDA and National Cotton Council (NCC) officials with the ministers of these West African countries that had been set for Dec. 14 to 16 in Bamako, Mali, has been pushed back in order to prepare advance copies of information and permit increased participation.
In a letter to the NCC, Terpstra said, "With your help we have been seeking broadened linkages between these countries and our American cotton sector while helping to access development opportunities for their small-scale farmers."
USDA and the NCC have been planning the conference as a follow-up to earlier efforts to establish cooperative ties with these countries.
In October, a technical team of government and cotton industry advisors toured several of these countries to assess needs and identify both short and long-term opportunities for cooperative efforts and assistance. The tour was preceded by a ministerial conference in Burkina Faso, June 20 to 24, attended by Woody Anderson, NCC chairman and a Texas cotton producer. In addition, a number of ambassadors and ministers from the West African countries participated in U.S. cotton industry orientation sessions and a U.S. Cotton Belt tour July 19 to 26.
At their upcoming conference in Mali, USDA and NCC officials will present several near term projects intended as a first step to address the opportunities identified earlier by the technical team.
"The U.S. cotton industry looks forward to this next step of direct communications with our West African counterparts to determine opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperative programs," Anderson said. "We had hoped to get this accomplished this month, but we are pleased that the ministers are committed to participating in this conference at a later date."
USDA Undersecretary J.B. Penn plans to head the upcoming U.S. delegation. John Pucheu, Tranquillity, Calif., NCC American Cotton Producers chairman, will represent the U.S. cotton industry.
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