Louis Dreyfus is selling Macrofertil, its fertiliser business in Australia, to Agrium’s Australian unit, Landmark Operations. Louis Dreyfus sold its African fertiliser unit earlier this year, but still owns a fertiliser business in South America.
ADM is selling its Bolivian oilseeds business, which includes a processing facility, nine grain silos and distribution operations, to Inversiones Piuranas. Meanwhile, the company has tied up with Apollo Global Management to submit a new bid for Unilever’s spreads business valued at USD 7 billion.
ED&F Man said it will restructure its sugar business because of low prices. It also plans to divest, partially or completely, its global physical grains trading business.
Armajaro Asset Management, well known for cocoa and coffee trading, is closing its flagship hedge fund CC+. The company says that algorithmic trading is rendering physical commodity trading uncompetitive. The company intends to begin a new fund in Apr-Jun 2018, although no details have been provided. The company’s assets under management fell from USD 2 billion in 2011 to USD 254 million in 2016.
In Brazil, Copersucar will partner with BP‘s Brazilian unit to form a 50:50 logistics joint venture which will manage Copersucar’s ethanol storage facility in Paulinia.
Shipping costs for dry-bulk commodities have escalated sharply since July, pushing the Baltic Dry Index to a near four-year high on the back of China’s coal and iron ore demand. Agricultural trade is taking a hit as freight costs, which on an average make 11% of total costs, are at a 7-year high.
To feed the country’s fast growing demand for premium beer, China has doubled imports of Canadian barley in the face of disappointing crops in the EU and Australia, from where it usually sources most of its needs.
US soybean crushing capacity is expected to increase by 5% in 2019 from 1.9 billion bushels currently, the fastest expansion rate since 1997/98 as growing feed demand pushed margins up to an 18-month high. The increase in processing capacity is expected to boost demand for soybeans, which the USDA forecast will be planted over 91 million acres next year, a record high. Even so, this may not be enough. The National Oilseed Processing Association has forecast that global production must increase by 20% to fill the growth in feed demand over the next 10 years.
Countries are looking at imposing a meat tax to meet the targets of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The director of Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) said meat taxes are already being discussed in Denmark, Sweden and Germany. An Oxford University study in November mooted a 40% tax on meat and a 20% tax on milk to compensate for the damage to the environment and health.
In the US, Monsanto has announced a cash-back incentive for farmers who use its dicamba-based XtendiMax herbicide on Xtend GM soybeans in order to offset costly government legislations. Several US states have banned dicamba-based herbicides, or are asking farmers to undergo special training. Seperately, a source said that Bayer’s Monsanto takeover bid is likely to see more hurdles from the EU antitrust regulators who are concerned that the purchase would hurt competition.
Wildfires have destroyed or damaged a large part of California’s avocado and lemon crops in the last few weeks. However, consumers should not be affected as they can still source from Mexico and South America. Even so, the future may be tough for farmers in California; the governor has said that wildfires, because of climate change, are ‘the new normal’.
The World Resources Institute and Cargill have mapped 2.3 million ha of cocoa plantations in Brazil, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Indonesia to monitor deforestation, and devise long-term solutions to the problem.
China will no longer allow the import of plastic waste as of January 2018, a significant move given that the country took in 51% of the world’s plastic scrap imports in 2016. This is bad news because countries that had been using China’s recycling industry will have nowhere to send their waste, potentially increasing the threat of pollution. The good news, however, is that efforts are ongoing to develop edible packaging in a bid to get rid of plastic. Check it out here.
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