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Jim Sutter (pictured bottom right) is CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council

Good morning, Jim. Could you please tell me about the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) and what it does?

We differentiate and build a preference for U.S. soy, and we ensure market access for U.S. soy in markets all around the world. We have a global network of about 140 people that work for our organization, most of them are outside the U.S.

How do you differentiate U.S. soy?

We demonstrate to our customers the U.S. Soy Advantage. It is anchored by four key elements. The first is its exceptional composition and intrinsic quality such as its amino acid profile and energy level. The second is consistent supply and reliability of our farmers and the whole export supply chain. The third is sustainability and our farmers commitment to protect the environment and conserve our natural resources. The final element is innovation beyond the bushel and the U.S. soy industry’s promise to continually adapt, evolve and improve.

How environmentally sustainable is U.S. soy?

Sustainability is in the DNA of our farmers; 97 percent of our farms are family-owned and nearly all are multi-generational. The farmers I talk with are always proud to tell me that they are 4^th, 5^th or 6^th generation.

For me, one of the ultimate measures of sustainability is if farmers are passing on their farms to the next generation. Not only that, but farmers will all also tell you that they want to leave their farm – particularly the soil – in better condition than when they started.

The U.S. Soil Conservation Service was founded in 1935, now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and it has really helped educate and guide farmers on how to minimize soil erosion, as well as to limit the runoff of water and reduce the amount of energy they use.

When I think about what consumers around the world are concerned about – what they want to know when they’re asking about sustainability – is that the farmland will be there to feed their children and grandchildren. I think this multi-generational aspect is a great example of the sustainable way that we farm.

In addition, we have a program called the U.S. Soy Sustainability Assurance Protocol; it was developed by a multi-stakeholder group of global consumers, NGOs and the U.S. soybean industry as a means of verifying or showing the sustainability of our commodity. The European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation (FEFAC), which has developed soy-sourcing guidelines that allows buyers to verify the sustainability of the soy that they’re sourcing, has approved and recognised the verification.

How are the trade wars affecting you?

The U.S. soybean industry started investing in China 40 years ago. We’re very pleased with the relationship that we have built up over that time.

China is the largest import market in the world for soy. The trade war was detrimental for U.S. farmers, and we lost market share in this valuable destination for U.S. soy, but I anticipate this for only an ephemeral period. In the meantime, we shifted some exports to other regions, but you don’t want to be hindered from a market that makes up 60 percent of total world import demand.

We’re pleased that the Phase One agreement has been put in place, and we are optimistic that it will be implemented. The volume is significant as China pledged to buy $32 billion worth of U.S. agriculture products over two years. I know that there’s a lot of talking back and forth between the two countries, but I think at the end of the day China, and its many importers of U.S. Soy with whom we’ve built strong relationships, wants to see the agreement implemented as much as we do.

If you’re a sizable importer, you want multiple origins to choose from, so China has identified suppliers from both northern hemisphere origin (primarily from the United States) and southern hemisphere origin (primarily from Brazil). That’s how world trade works: importers want to have multiple origins to buy from, and exporters want to have multiple destinations to sell to.

How has African Swine Fever affected exports?

It did lower total global demand for soy, but it didn’t impact the U.S. too much. It was happening in China at a time when exports were down. We hear that the ASF situation is improving pretty rapidly there, and we’re glad to hear that.

With regard to ASF in other markets, we’re certainly concerned because it is a serious disease for the swine industries in those respective countries. So, we want to do all we can to help prevent the spread of ASF, and of course, stop it from reaching the U.S. We hope that science can help eradicate ASF, or at least keep it under control.

Are you actively trying to develop overseas markets outside of China?

As I mentioned, China is the largest import market for soy, but we do a lot of work in other markets as well. We diversify our marketing efforts, and we have stepped up our work in countries with large populations, low protein consumption and growing economies – for example Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Egypt.

We work to teach people in these countries, to bring them skills on how to better use soy to improve livestock nutrition – the kind of things we did in China years ago. We are trying to take that same educational model to other markets around the world.

Which are the top three export markets for U.S. soy?

As individual countries, China, Mexico and Egypt are our top three markets, but when you take the EU as a whole it slips in there at number two after China.

Does USSEC also work to increase domestic U.S. soy demand?

The United Soybean Board (USB) is one of our founding members; they do the domestic marketing work for soy inside the U.S.

USB manages the checkoff program. Each U.S. farmer contributes a small portion of the selling price of soybeans into the checkoff program, and that provides resources that USB invests in the domestic market; they also invest in the work that the USSEC does internationally.

U.S. soy farmers have been going through a rough time recently. What message would you like to send to them?

It’s fortunate that you are in the food production business. The products that farmers produce serve as the foundation for food, feed and fuel and are grown in a sustainable and high-quality manner that meet what the people of the world need to survive and thrive.

I tell our farmers to ‘stick with it’, and that the future looks bright. We have a growing world population out there. You’re going to be an important part of feeding those people in the future.

Thank you, Jim for your time and comments!

Jim Sutter presented at the IGC Virtual Conference in London on June 10^th. To see his and other presentations, please register here.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

Pedro Amaral is Deputy Director of Proforest. I talked to him by telephone from Sao Paulo.

Good morning, Pedro. Could you tell me a little about Proforest?

Proforest is a not-for-profit group that works with governments, producers and other private sector partners, as well as civil society organisations and NGOs throughout agricultural and forest product supply chains.

Founded in 2000, we now have around a hundred people in our group. Our headquarters are in Oxford UK, and we also have offices in Colombia, Brazil, Ghana, Malaysia and Indonesia. We are currently opening offices in Mexico and the Netherlands.

Our mission is to help people produce and source natural resources sustainably. We have a focus on agricultural commodities, and we partner with companies in the supply chain – producers, traders, manufacturers, brands, and retailers – to help them come up with commitments around how they produce and source commodities; we then help them to implement these commitments.

We have a charity and we have a consulting arm. Part of our resources come from the companies that we partner with. These are some of the largest brands on the planet: Nestlé, Mars, McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Unilever, etc. Part of our resources come from funding agencies such as the UK’s DFID. Whenever we work with grants, we work on specific programmes.

In terms of deforestation, soy and palm must be the biggest culprits…

Cattle raising is by a long way the commodity associated with the largest deforestation areas, and soy comes second. Brazil is where most of the commodity-related deforestation is happening. Some researchers estimate twice as much native forest is associated to cattle raising in Brazil than is to palm production in Indonesia and Malaysia^,.

Of course, a lot of the soy and cattle produced is not associated with recent deforestation – we could assume most of it is not. The deforestation cycle is complex and includes drivers such as land speculation, land grabbing or illegal lodging, on top of commodity production – which might end up happening on land cleared initially due to other drivers. Deforestation not only happens for commodity production, but there is a clear link with it, sometimes directly and other times indirectly.

Tell me about the Soy Toolkit.

The Soy Toolkit is part of a broader program called the Good Growth Partnership that addresses beef, palm oil and soy. It is funded by the Global Environment Facility and is developed in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF). It is a demand side toolkit that shows supply chain companies the resources that already exist to address deforestation, native vegetation conversion and human rights issues in the supply chain. Overall, it aims at helping increase the capacity that companies have to implement their commitments, building on existing initiatives.

The Soy Toolkit can help companies understand, for instance, tools that will allow them to show their different stakeholders (customers, for instance) that the soy being traded is deforestation-free. On the other hand, it will also allow them to flag whenever there is a problem, which in turn provides them with the opportunity to take action to resolve it.

What are the resources and initiatives that already exist?

The Amazon Soy Moratorium, as one example, is an agreement signed in 2006 to ensure that soy production in the Amazon region only occurs on existing agricultural land and not through deforestation of native vegetation. It has been successful in helping reduce soy-related deforestation in the Amazon.

Anyone who buys soy from Brazil should check that they are buying from a company that is a signatory to the moratorium: If they are, the buyer should ask for the audit reports to see if they are 100 percent compliant, and if they’re not, to take action on it. If they’re not a signatory, then the buyer should ask them to become a signatory. The moratorium provides a credible and successful framework to demonstrate that, whenever you are trading soy from the Amazon, it is deforestation-free.

The Forest Code obliges a landowner to protect from at least 20 to 80 percent of their land as native vegetation, depending where the property is. Under the farm registry system the government provides on-line access to every single farm boundary, as well as information on protected areas. This provides people with an unprecedented level of transparency with over 5 million properties enrolled – more than 90 percent of all the properties in the country.

If you are a trader, you can ask your supplier for the registry number. You can then use this number on the system to see, for instance, if their registry is active, pending or cancelled. If it’s cancelled, it could be because the farm overlays with protected areas like an indigenous territory.

The Federal Environmental Agency maintains a list of environmental embargoes, some of which are because of illegal deforestation. IBAMA puts in the public domain areas that that have been found to be breaching our environmental laws. If you buy soybeans directly from the farmer, you can cross-check your supplier name with this list.

Another example is the Public Prosecutor’s Office website, which includes lawsuits related to environmental and social issues like land conflicts. It will show you if you’re buying from someone who has a lawsuit outstanding.

There are many other initiatives and resources we feature in the Soy Toolkit. We mapped over 100 of them, including tools that can help you with traceability, continuous improvement programs for farmers, or information on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) related to policy implementation being reported by supply chain companies.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic for the Amazon jungle in terms of soy and agriculture?

The past two decades have proven that deforestation can be drastically reduced while crop (and meat) production can keep on increasing. Looking back, the combination of market mechanisms, geospatial monitoring, improved law enforcement, partnerships between the private sector and the civil society managed to accomplish great results in the Amazon. I am, therefore, optimistic that there is a successful track record of initiatives that, together, can achieve such great results.

On the other hand, we have seen deforestation rising again in recent years. A recent report shows that in 2019, Brazil accounted for a third of the world’s tropical primary forest loss on the planet. There has been a troubling increase in forest loss in Brazil and some of the hot spots of loss are happening within indigenous territories.  Recent research shows that most of the deforestation was not authorized and could be then deemed illegal.

Looking forward, there is a need to further strengthen law enforcement in Brazil. The market has to step up. Supply chain companies might need to play an even more important role now, by monitoring their supply chains and implementing their responsible sourcing policies.

Companies should work to shed light on what is being produced according to the law, respecting the zero conversion commitments and human rights — and I would expect many, if not most of producers, to be compliant. By scrutinizing their supply chains, they will also shed light on where wrongdoing is happening and will therefore be able to work as a catalyst to promote positive changes on the ground whilst further strengthening their commercial relationships.

Is there anything you would like to add?

I think that the more everyone knows about what’s already available, and what’s been successful already, the more capable they will be to implement their sourcing policies.

Up until April, 2021, we can offer free webinars, workshops and training funded by the Global Environment Facility through WWF to help companies understand what traceability and deforestation analysis tools exist, and how they can benefit from them. It’s all available in English, Portuguese and Mandarin.  People can contact us via the e-mail soytoolkit@proforest.net

We’ve just secured funding to extend our soy toolkit to beef and palm oil – which will allow us to shed light on resources companies can build on to implement their responsible commitments related to these commodities too. It will build on the work we did for the Soy Toolkit and lessons learned from that programme.

Our ultimate goal is to help supply chain companies to implement their commitments. We are not telling companies what to do, but we are rather showing them the tools and resources that they can use in implementing their commitments.

Thank you, Pedro for your time and input!

Pedro will be presenting at the International Grains Council virtual conference on 10th June 2020.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

Alejandra Danielson Castillo is based in Singapore where she serves as the regional director for South Asia for the U.S. Grains Council.

Good afternoon, Alejandra. How did you end up in Singapore?

I was born in Nicaragua and I came up to the United States for university. I did both my undergraduate and my graduate degrees in management in Minnesota.

I worked for Cargill for about seven years across three different states within the grain, oilseeds and cotton business units and focused on trade execution before moving to the U.S. Grains Council, first as a manager for global trade, providing trade and market updates to our international offices and customers, and later joining their newly formed division for South Asia. I moved to Singapore in July 2019. The Council sees great opportunities for growth and market access for feed grains and biofuels in the South Asia region and especially India. As part of the Council’s commitment to the region, it is working to open a liaison office in Delhi, India to continue our engagements.

What does the U.S. Grains Council do?

The U.S. Grains Council is a non-profit organization that develops export markets for U.S. barley, corn, sorghum and related products including distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS) and ethanol. With full-time presence in 28 locations, the Council operates programs in more than 50 countries and the European Union. The Council believes exports are vital to global economic development and to U.S. agriculture’s profitability.

In a sense, we are the marketing branch for U.S. grain farmers, tasked with creating market opportunities, identifying markets where U.S agricultural commodities are both needed and competitive, and helping to address market issues that inhibit trade. Many U.S. farmers contribute to different commodities checkoff programs based on what they grow – some that are state-based and some that are national – that attempt to improve the market position of the covered commodity by expanding markets, increasing demand, and developing new uses and markets.

We work to promote knowledge and understanding of the U.S. system for production and exports. For example, we bring trade teams from different parts of the world to the United States to visit our farmers, our operations and our marketing system, our ports etc. We also bring U.S. farmers and other stakeholders to the markets we’re trying to service. This cross collaboration serves to increase awareness of the impact of trade in the daily lives of the farmers in the U.S. and across the globe.

Is your job getting harder now that the pendulum is swinging away from free trade in agriculture?

We do have headwinds on the trade side. We are seeing more tariffs and more trade disputes; they certainly create challenges for us when we are trying to bring U.S. agricultural products into certain markets.

The U.S. Grains Council has always been very vocal in its support for free trade. We believe free trade in agriculture is beneficial to U.S. farmers and to consumers in importing countries. We often say, “when trade works, the world wins.”

During these turbulent times we continue to promote free trade, and to create an understanding of the benefits free trade brings.

The silver lining is that it’s pushing us to more actively develop new markets.

Could you give an example?

We’re starting to see there’s a need and a market for U.S. commodities in Bangladesh, as well as a renewed interest among the importers in the country. I’ve gotten to know the top five importers in the country and have been working with them in improving their supply chain. Bangladesh is currently importing a good amount of DDGS.

Of course, these markets are not anywhere near the volumes we can see in, say, India or China, but they present a very strong value proposition for U.S. agriculture.

Are you optimistic about the prospects of U.S. exports to India?

I am very optimistic. India presents some challenges from a trade policy perspective as we currently don’t have access for DDGS or ethanol, but there’s been an increase in conversations between our two governments around a bilateral trade deal, especially after U.S. President Trump visited India in February 2019, and we remain hopeful a final resolution will be reached before the end of the year.

From a market perspective, we see an annual potential import demand within India for as much as 700,000 metric tonnes of DDGS. India is the third largest market for U.S. ethanol, with over 202 million gallons imported last year. The Council is working on developing a market for fuel ethanol in the country.

We’ve had many Indian trade teams come to the United States and visit farms and look at how our farmers work. It’s certainly been a very positive experience for me. It absolutely solidifies my feeling we’re doing something that is going to create a win-win scenario for everyone.

But it must be tough all the same…

Certainly, not every day is a great day, but there’s a lot of positivity around understanding a new market and opening it up for U.S. agriculture. I am personally very excited about South Asia. I am confident we can create value both for our farmers in the U.S. and for importing countries.

Thank you, Alejandra for your time and input!

Alejandra will be one of the speakers at the  International Grains Council virtual conference on Wednesday 10th June.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

Deven Chitaliya is Senior Vice President & Global Head Credit at Olam in Singapore, where he is responsible for Credit and Counterparty Risk management across 12 agri-business platforms spread across more than 70 countries. He is also responsible for development and roll-out of company-wide Enterprise Risk Management Framework.

Could you please tell me a little about the Enterprise Risk Management, or ERM, that I believe that you helped introduce at Olam?

All organisations must manage risks effectively to endure and thrive. Traditionally, most organisations assign risk management to business unit leaders within their areas of responsibility. We call this “silo” or “stove-pipe” risk management. For example, the Chief Technology Officer is responsible for managing risks related to information technology operations; the Treasurer is responsible for managing risks related to financing and cash flow, and so on.

However, risk does not respect organisation charts; it can be anywhere and take any form. Some risks “fall between siloes”, unnoticed by individual leaders. Others can affect different units differently – managers may not know that a decision taken for one silo can cause or escalate risk in another. The upshot is that risk can go unnoticed or not be effectively tackled until a catastrophic event is triggered.

Another challenge with traditional risk management is that it is often internally focused and granular – looking within the four walls of the organisation, with minimal focus on risks that may emerge from outside the business.

At Olam we have mapped 51 risks (including 19 quantifiable risks) across 11 risk categories that Risk Office monitor, measure and report at regular interval along with each department.

We have 13 people in the Risk Office team in Singapore and 2 in London.

What are the most important considerations when implementing a Risk Management Framework for a company?

The most important is a strong governance structure and an independence of risk management team. You also need what I call a “holistic risk capture’” that is both outward as well as inward looking, and which covers the entire company, not just individual business platforms within the company. Risk must be consolidated and assessed both at business as well as corporate level.

Obviously, you need to measure risk wherever you can, and keep on stress testing and analysing different scenarios. You need proactive operational risk controls in the areas of credit, counterparty, stock, quality. At a platform level, you also need strict ‘drawdown’ and ‘stop loss’ policies.

But perhaps most importantly you need to assess your company’s risk appetite. That may sound obvious, but many companies go into trading without first assessing their risk-taking capabilities.

Could you tell me which are the biggest risks that Olam currently faces?

The biggest and most important risk that we face is the health and safety of our employees; we spend a lot of time making sure that we minimize those risks. This is especially the case now with COVID-19, where we must make sure that social distancing, sanitary measures and all requisite PPEs are always made available for factories, warehouses and our plantations.

I would say that cyber-security risk is our second biggest risk. The innovative ways in which your systems and people information can be hacked and misused sometimes even surprises experts. With wide-spread operations across product platforms and geographies, standardization of IT controls and effective implementation of latest security controls across the company becomes key to counter and reduce losses in case of actual cyber-attack or cyber fraud.

Supply disruption is currently our third biggest risk. Labour shortages and transport / logistics bottlenecks can also be an issue. We do see some slowdown in select countries. However, most of the Agri products fall under the list of essential commodities and therefore the trade is still immune from complete shutdown.

There have been some relatively short-lived food export bans from certain countries, but they have not really had much impact on the supply of food. Ports have remained open, and the food supply chain has shown itself to be robust and flexible in dealing with the current crisis.

I would put demand destruction as our fourth biggest risk. This risk is less with food products, as demand more or less remains constant. People have to eat. However, things can be more complex with what we consider as industrial products like cotton where purchases by end-users can be deferred for fairly longer periods.

For example, we have to ask ourselves how the collapse in retail clothing demand in Europe and the US might lead to the cancellation of their orders, say, with Bangladeshi clothing manufacturing factories, which in turn might affect cotton sales contracts.

In-depth regular risk reviews with business team with focus on operational checks and controls plus assessment of high-risk areas and bottlenecks helps us take proactive actions as “One Olam” team.

Has Covid19 increased counterparty risks?

Olam is quite unique among the major agricultural trade houses in that we are very involved at origin. Our vertically integrated supply chain for our Upstream businesses means that we have very limited and well-managed counterparty risk on our supply side.

Our counterparty risks tend to be downstream where we are dependent on timely contract performance and payments from our Customers. Market volatility plays an important role. Higher the volatility, higher the ‘mark to market’ exposures, and therefore higher the risks.

Not only do we have to assess the risks to our businesses, we also have to constantly monitor the risks to our clients’ businesses: are they facing supply issues; has a major buyer defaulted on them; how is their cash flow with regard to their stock levels; how is their payment performance with us, what are the inputs from our market network, etc? Any of these things can show us an early warning sign / red flag for timely and corrective action.

It goes a long way to ensure long-term relationship building and trust when we try to offer innovative solutions where possible to support their businesses. e.g. short-term cash-flow issues, bank assisted structures to support payments, credit insurance / collaterals / deposits / parent guarantee backed exposures, etc

What keeps you awake at night?

That there is something out there that we don’t know about. I am not worried about the things we know about: any event that may occur once in a while in normal course of business; we have robust systems in place to monitor and manage these known risks.

I am spending a lot of time now, for example, wondering whether there will be a second wave of COVID-19, and making sure that if there is one, we will be ready for it.

Another unknown, of course, is technological development and innovation: will something be invented that might negatively affect one of our businesses? There is no easy way of knowing that except to remain up-to-date on what are the major initiatives, experiments and actions being undertaken across industry!

Many thanks, Deven for your time and input!

Deven will be participating as a panellist in Commodity Trading Week online

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

Ric Rhinehart was until recently Executive Director and CEO of the SCA, the Specialty Coffee Association. I asked him if he was worried about current coffee demand with cafés closed and a sharp increase in unemployed.

The price elasticity of coffee is low. If you are a coffee drinker, coffee is a relatively high priority at a relatively low-price basis, so you’re willing to defer other expenses in order to continue to drink coffee. Conversely, if coffee was suddenly free you wouldn’t increase your consumption to say nine or ten cups a day. You’d still maintain your three or four cups.

Coffee has also been very resilient in economic downturns. That was true in the global recession in 2008 when coffee consumption stayed relatively strong. What shifts is the venue of consumption. When you’re in an economic downturn people tend to return to drinking more coffee at home and drinking less coffee out of home.

In the current scenario it’s quite different in that the cafés were literally forced to close because of social distancing. I suspect that a lot of marginal operations will disappear.

It seems to be the specialty sector that’s been driving the demand growth in the US. Is that correct?

Absolutely. In mature markets, particularly in the US, coffee consumption had peaked in the early to mid 1960’s and was in decline until the mid-90s when the speciality coffee movement began, and people started returning to coffee.

With the growth of coffee bars and shops there was also a new venue of consumption. People began drinking coffee outside of their home and their workplace. That really changed the market.

And is that demand growth continuing in the US?

Yes, coffee consumers in the US now drink on average three cups per day, and that’s back up to practically to where it was at its peak. Consumption continues to be on the rise, and it continues to be driven largely by the specialty sector.

Coffee consumption in kilos is still just a little less than 70 percent in home, but in dollar value it’s probably 55 percent outside the home now. A lot of that has to do with the price point of a cup versus a price point of a kilo.

I have heard talk of a price crisis in coffee. Is there a crisis?

Coffee farmers, small holders in particular around the world, frequently produce and sell coffee at below their cost of production. They don’t have a lot of other options. For many smallholders, coffee is a cash crop that augments subsistence farming at the same time.

The board of the SCA asked me to spend my terminal year focusing on that price crisis. We launched a price crisis response within the organization to try to understand what drives the cyclical low prices in coffee and what we might do about it.

What’s the solution?

Unfortunately, I know more about the drivers of the problem than I know about the solutions.

I believe that the problem’s biggest driver has been the shift in the approach to economic activity from pre-Friedman capitalism to a post-Friedman capitalism. Instead of Ten Commandments there were two: first, that the market shall be unrestrained; second, that shareholder value should be paramount. That became the religion of economics worldwide.

It seems that the pendulum is swinging back towards stakeholder rather than shareholder capitalism.

That’s very good news for the coffee industry and for all of the farmers around the world. It’s a belief that you’ve got to look after your stakeholders.

And in economic terms that suggests that you have to price in all the externalities. You can’t let the market force out the externalities.

The most important is to reassess how we form our values as a separate issue from how we assign value.

What is your favorite coffee and your favorite way of preparing it?

That’s like asking me which out of my four children is my favorite. I don’t have a favorite, but I love Ethiopian coffees. Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. There’s more diversity in flavor and style in coffee in Ethiopia than anywhere else on Earth.

It is generally true that the way you’ve come to coffee is the way you stay with coffee. I grew up as a drip coffee drinker, and I am a drip coffee drinker today.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

This is a brief extract of an interview that will be published in my upcoming book “Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee”