The stage is set for another "prosperous" year ahead in cotton, says Joe Nicosia, CEO of the Allenberg Cotton Company.

Noted cotton merchant Nicosia made comments to the summer meeting of the Southern Cotton Ginners Association last week in Memphis.

The possibility of a bumper crop and rising consumption rates in China, India and worldwide could benefit U.S. growers, Nicosia says.

With the 2010 crop shaping up to be extremely large, especially in west Texas, with small abandonment rates, and a foreign deficit of 18.3 million bales, U.S. producers could benefit from a large export market of 14.3 million bales, Nicosia says. "Our saving grace is exports," Nicosia says. When India stopped exports in 2009, U.S. cotton prices shot up. "India continues to be in that mode. It will have to sell cheap" until December.

Nicosia calls the current situation a "front- and back-loaded export market." Every country, he says, is sold out of cotton. "You can sell it if you can ship it," he says. "But our structure is set up to hold cotton and not to ship it. The customer wants it now in a more immediate timeframe."

As the big Texas crop comes out of the field, "we'll want to have it loaded," Nicosia. "From December onward, India will be ready to go. Once India starts to sell, they'll be setting the price. The U.S. is setting the price now."

China continues to be the biggest player. Nicosia calls it "The Return of the Beast." China's mills could soak up India's availability in October through March and still require more cotton from the U.S.

"The big U.S. crop comes at an opportune time for us and for the world's biggest cotton customer, China," Nicosia says.