The FAO Index of world food prices rose 1.2 per cent in November and is close to the record highs seen in 2011. Grains and dairy prices led the rally, while vegetable oils and meat prices declined. Rabobank warns that food prices are likely to stay near record highs next year due to consumers stocking up, high energy and shipping prices, adverse weather, and a strong dollar.
India will pay record fertiliser subsidies of more than $20.64 billion in the 2021/22 fiscal year, almost double the amount budgeted. India caps the price of urea at 5360 rupees ($71.36) per tonne, while world prices have surged to around $990/tonne.
Reuters writes that the Indian government’s recent decision to abandon farm reform will mean that no political party will attempt similar reforms for at least a quarter-century. An economist warns that “inefficiencies in the system will continue to deliver wastage, and food will continue to rot.”
The UK government has published its Sustainable Farming Initiative to replace EU farm subsidies. Environmental campaigners say the plans display a ‘shocking lack of ambition’.
Farmers in eastern Australia are bracing themselves for further downpours after the country’s wettest November in 122 years. It is too early to evaluate the extent of crop losses or the quality of wheat that farmers will succeed in harvesting. On the other side of the Pacific, Californian farmers are concerned that drought could be a recurring problem and may lead them to rethink which crops they can grow.
The queue of container ships waiting to unload at the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, has risen to 96, a new record. The average wait for ships to unload is 20.8 days, almost a week longer than a month ago. Cargo ships are bypassing the Port of Oakland, the third busiest in California, and heading directly back to Asia. The port’s volume declined by 20 per cent in October compared to last year, while the number of vessels visiting the port fell 43 per cent.
Pre-tax profits for the container shipping industry could be more than $300 billion for the two years 2021 and 2022. The sector is forecast to make $150 billion in 2021, up from $25.4 billion in 2020, and could make even more in 2022.
Maersk will give its roughly 80,000 employees a $1,000 end-of-year bonus out of an expected 2021 income of more than $17 billion. The company awarded its workers a similar bonus in 2020 when it made $2.9 billion.
MSC’s recent buying and building spree mean it has overtaken Maersk as the world’s largest container-shipping company. MSC has a net tonnage of approximately 4,239,668 TEU, 5,366 TEU more than Maersk’s 4,234,302 TEU.
Meanwhile, A.P. Moller Holding, the owner of Maersk, is diversifying outside the sector. It has bought Unilabs, a provider of medical diagnostic services, including COVID-19 tests.
Biofuel producers in the US are waiting for the administration to announce the quantity of biofuels refiners must blend into their fuel mix this year and next. The US administration is also expected to propose expanding the kinds of renewable fuel eligible for credits under the US Renewable Fuel Standard programme.
The business journal Barrons is bullish on biofuels, particularly renewable diesel, and recommends three stocks that could profit from the anticipated boom.
BASF will launch its Global Carbon Farming Program next year to help farmers reduce their CO2 emissions. BASF has committed to reducing CO2 crop emissions by 30 per cent per tonne by 2030. And if you have been wondering what people mean by regenerative agriculture, this article looks at four different ways of approaching it.
The anti-meat media campaign continues with Time Magazine declaring that Cows Are the New Coal. The magazine argues that “if the global livestock industry were its own country, it would be the world’s third-biggest greenhouse gas emitter, falling between US and India when it comes to total greenhouse gas emissions.”
The New Statesman says that ‘we are committing ecocide on a biblical scale’ due to deforestation for cattle and soy in the Amazon. In a separate article, the magazine writes that methane is much worse than CO2 for the planet – but comes up with suggestions for what we should do about it.
A Norwegian technology company thinks it has already found a solution to stop slurry (the fertilising mixture of manure, hay and water) from emitting so much methane. The new technology uses a plasma torch to add nitrogen from air to the slurry to stop methanogenesis – the breakdown of methane microbes that release the gas. The company says their technology reduces methane emissions from slurry by 99 per cent and cuts ammonia emissions by 95 per cent.
Impact NRS, an American Israeli innovation company, has established a joint venture with Ben-Gurion University and the Volcani Center to develop cattle feed that reduces methane emissions from cows.
Another Israeli company, Israel Chemicals Ltd (ICL), has opened an $18 million production facility in St Louis to produce plant-based alt-meat. The plant can make more than 15 million pounds of alt-meat each year. Meanwhile, the alt-meat company Impossible Foods want to persuade UK farmers to give up cattle farming and plant trees instead.
Workers have accepted a new labour contract at Cargill’s Canadian beef processing plant in Alberta, averting a strike. The plant accounts for about 40 per cent of Canada’s beef supply.
Lastly, palm oil producers in Malaysia are worried that the omicron outbreak could lead countries such as Bangladesh and India to close their borders, exacerbating the acute labour shortages in the palm sector. Malaysian-listed FGV Holdings told Bloomberg that it currently has only 70 per cent of its required labour and hopes that 7,000 foreign workers will arrive by the end of the first quarter.
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