Our Industry is going through a phase of substantial consolidation. A number of long established market participants have either left the Industry or been merged with other substantial companies and some new participants have entered.

The remaining market participants should do well providing that we do not have another “black swan” situation which occurred twice in 2008 – once in March 2008 and then again with the de-leveraging caused by the Lehmann and AIG crisis.

Our desire is to empower the Farmer in Africa so that his yields can increase and his income increase substantially and to help him realize value down the supply chain. This will have a profound effect on the local economies and help break down the cycle of poverty that goes from one year to the next.

I hope that African governments will look seriously at the genetically modified seed issue as this would have an immediate impact.

The hurdles in achieving this are often that many times the participants involved have different agendas.

The success will be when everybody works in the same direction for the same end goal and we hope this can be achieved by honest and open dialogue.

At the moment it would appear likely that most farmers will achieve better than the MSP so it is unlikely to have much effect on world cotton prices unless international prices go back to this level

I think that the Indian MSP provides a fair return to Growers and the knowledge that it is there for the last two seasons must give confidence to the farmers to plant cotton again, which is healthy for the Indian cotton Industry at a time when acreage for raw cotton has declined globally.