The ICAC’s Virtual 79th Plenary Meeting is being held 6-8 December with the theme, ‘Fortifying the Cotton Supply Chain: New Approaches to New Challenges.’ The Plenary Meeting will continue with two major sessions on each of the next two days: ‘Fortifying the Cotton Supply Chain’ and ‘Labelling: What Is the Real Story about My T-Shirt?’, which are scheduled for 8:00 am (GMT-5) until 12:00 pm on Tuesday, 7 December; and ‘Advances and Challenges of Hybrid Cotton Technology’ and ‘The World Café: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainability, from 8:00, am until 11:20 am on Wednesday, 8 December.
The opening speeches included the Standing Committee Chair, Anshul Sharma and the Executive Director, Kai Hughes. A market report consisted of six comprehensive presentations from members of the Secretariat. In another first, two of those presentations were delivered by the ICAC’s Data Scientist, Matthew Looney, and Head of Textiles, Kanwar Usman. Both of those positions were created in 2021 to meet the information needs of a rapidly changing world.
During his speech, Mr. Hughes used the unprecedented events of the past two years to illustrate how the Secretariat turned the challenges into opportunities. ‘The ICAC has probably had its busiest year to date and, despite Covid, managed to achieve more than 80% of the objectives in the ICAC’s Strategic Plan, which is remarkable in these turbulent times. We can thank Covid for making us look at and reevaluate our processes and procedures. That forced us to innovate, which is critical for us to be well-positioned to meet the challenges that will come.
