This morning the National Cotton Council released its annual cotton acreage planting intensions survey. The survey which was open from mid December to mid January. Based on the survey respondents, the NCC is expecting an increase of 3.7% or 466 thousand acres. The total expected plantings for the US is 13.078 Million acres.

For the Southeast, the NCC is expecting a small, 2.3%, increase in acres. The Southeast is moving from 2.523 million acres to 2.582 million acres. Specifically, the state by state numbers are as follows:

Alabama: 439 thousand +0.8%
Florida: 106 thousand +6.9%
Georgia: 1.287 million +0.6%
North Carolina: 406 thousand +8.2%
South Carolina: 258 thousand +3.4%
Virginia: 87 thousand +3.1%.

The USDA will release their planting intensions survey later this Spring but the NCC survey gives us the first peek at what could be the trend for planting around the US.

The full report can be found at : http://www.cotton.org/econ/reports/annual-outlook.cfm.