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Do you think that ASF—African Swine Disease, is a bigger problem globally than the trade wars?” And what is your Chinese import number for beans?

We are at 84 million tonnes, and we are holding that steady for the year ahead. There is a range of estimates for the number of hogs in China, somewhere between 470 and 600 million. Most of us believe in a number of around 550 million. There is no census, but more than half the world’s hog herd in China. That’s what makes ASF so important in terms of the grain industry.

The biggest farms in China could be 50,000 head, and I understand that there are plans to have farms as large as 100,000 head. You also have the backyard farmer that may have two or three hogs. It is all over the range in terms of sizes and shapes. I suspect that in the longer term ASF will lead to the backyard farmer getting out of hogs, and the industry will become increasingly commercialised. It will be the norm to have herds of 50,000 to 200,000 head on vertically integrated operations.

The point is that China was our only consistent annual demand increase, somewhere between 5 and 7 million tonnes of soybeans each and every year. Now with ASF that demand growth has now gone. Poultry and aquaculture production is increasing, so that will stabilise bean imports going forward. But again the key is that Chinese demand is not increasing. Parts of West Africa are helping us in wheat, but the volumes are not significant. Corn may be better placed with the increase in Chinese demand for ethanol, but again that won’t be significant.”

But couldn’t the Chinese replace bean imports with pork imports? Could we feed our surplus beans to domestic pigs and then export the meat to China?

That is the hope for the future. We estimate that the US could eventually export 40,000 hogs per day to China, but for the moment we are nowhere close to that. The Chinese producers are liquidating their domestic hogs and this is depressing domestic prices. So the import margins don’t work. But at some stage that will end, and imports should again become profitable, first from the EU and then from the US. That could happen as early as late summer here. You could also see China importing more poultry, beef and even fish.

Staying on the subject of meat, do you concur with the view that Russian grain exports will peak as the country builds up their domestic meat production?

I don’t think that Russian grain exports have peaked. The Russians have been trying to build up their livestock and poultry herds for some time now and they have also struggled with ASF. The disease moved across Africa, on through Europe, then Russia, and now into China. So the Russians have some of the same issues. I believe it will be a while before the Russians export a significant amount of meat. They will do some trade into Kazakhstan or North-western China, but their herd expansion needs to be more robust, particularly in hogs.

The Europeans have learned to live with ASF; the Russians are trying to learn to live with it. The Chinese will try to do the same. Pharmaceutical companies have spent millions of dollars on trying to find a cure or a vaccine for the disease, but so far have come up with nothing. It is an old disease, first discovered in the early 1900s in South Africa. It is very virulent. I call it the Ebola of the swine industry because the organs bleed from the inside. We are at least five years away from a vaccine or antidote.”

What about lab based meat, or the growing popularity of vegan and vegetarian diets? Is that a concern for grain and oilseed farmers?

Lab-based meat is rather like cellulosic ethanol; we can do it relatively well in the test tube, but it is difficult to scale up to commercial production. I believe that we are still 10-20 years away from the moment when we can really scale this to a point where it has an impact on global agriculture. As for plant-based meat, veggie burgers and the like use pea protein.

What about the anti-gluten movement—is it affecting wheat demand?

It hasn’t had a sizeable impact. In the rich western nations there is some drop in bread and carbohydrate demand, but we are seeing more demand coming in from Africa. On a global basis, wheat demand is still increasing at an annual rate of about 1.7 percent.

And what about the trend towards organic production?

US farmers are looking for alternative markets, including organic grains. But we don’t see demand for organic production having any significant impact on global grain flows.

We are more worried by current developments regarding glycophosphate. There are now 1,300 cases pending against Monsanto and their parent company Bayer. You have to wonder if the EPA won’t one date ban the product, or whether Bayer will remove it from the market because of liabilities. Remember, food companies are now testing for it in their products.

If they did remove or ban it, it would be a significant change in global agricultural production. We don’t have a cheap substitute. So if you were to ask me what could change our world, then the answer has to be glycophosphate.

If it were banned or withdrawn from the market today, what effect would it have on global grain production?”

There isn’t a good substitute except for manual or mechanical cultivation to remove weeds. Cultivators were widely used to remove weeds around crops until the introduction of glycohosphate in the late 1980s and early 1990s. If it were banned or removed from the market today, we would probably go back to more crop rotations to keep weeds and insects at bay.

It is a big deal. We could lose 15 to 20 percent in yields. And of course, if we go back to tilling we would have more carbon in the atmosphere, and we would have to have more passes over the fields. And we would have to bring in more land to produce the same amount of food.

What are the other challenges facing the sector?

We believe that climate change is having more and more of an impact every year. As both Poles warm, the Jet Stream has more angulations, leading to weather patterns getting “stuck”. If you look at 2018, much of Eastern Europe and Western Russia had hot dry weather, while Reykjavik in Iceland only saw three days of sunshine during the whole summer.

Weather patterns tend to get stuck. The temperature gradients between the Poles are lacking, and this leads to lots of rain or lots of dryness. We are seeing this currently in the central US where cold and wet weather is impacting plantings.

Climate change is real; you can see it in the data. It is already affecting grain production and will continue to do so. However, the sun is dramatically cooling, and this could have an impact later if the planet cools.

What about the grain merchants: are there any signs that they might see better margins in the near future?

I am afraid that the grain merchants may have to put up with low margins for a few more years. We don’t see any change in that. It is the globalisation of supply with producers in both hemispheres. The buyers have become more short term in nature. The consolidation among the merchants will continue.

Farmers also have more information than they used to, and farm storage has grown. Grain merchants can no longer pick them off at harvest time. Sophistication has increased all along the supply chain. There are no fools any more; everyone is well versed in where their margins should be.

Large farmers are increasingly selling directly to the end user and this is something that Blockchain may facilitate. However it is unlikely that a farmer will sell to China, so there is still a role for the international trader.

Is there anything you want to add?

Only that we are in a period of continuing technological revolution in both trading and farming. But we still see a need for good information, research and analysis.

Thank you Dan for your time!

© Commodity Conversations ®

Dan Basse is founder and CEO of AgResources

Growing up in Wisconsin, Dan Basse raised hogs on his father’s farm to put himself through Wisconsin State University. He had originally planned to be a veterinarian, but after a few years running the hog operation, he began to realise that some years he made money and he could enjoy the university life, while other years he didn’t make much money, even though his costs hadn’t changed. He told me that he was doing the same things in terms of costs, but it was all about marketing the hogs.

He began to get interested in markets to try and understand what drives prices. He took some economic courses, fell in love with the subject and switched his major from veterinarian studies to economics.

Dan how many hogs did you have when you were a student?

I had between 120 and 150 each year,” he told me. “Running the operation gave me some ideas about the business of farming. It was a good way to get a young lad into the world of agriculture. I knew that I didn’t want to be a hog farmer long term, so maybe it also encouraged me to work harder in college!

And does the farm still exist?

We still have the family farm but we now employ a farm manager to run it for us. My mother is still alive at 83, but my father passed away in 2013. The farm is located near the city of Milwaukie and we are involved in an urban restoration project there, building a few apartment buildings on some of the land. But we are still farming; we don’t have livestock anymore, but we grow vegetables and apples.

About ten years ago my wife told me to get a hobby, so I bought a dairy farm in Ohio where I raise high-end Guernsey cattle. It is an unusual cattle breed for the US, but the breed has been in my family going back three generations. We show them in fairs and have had some national champions, so it has been quite successful. I enjoy it. It is a good way for me to get away from my consulting business and enjoy the rural life.

Are the cattle grass-fed?

Yes. They are largely grass-fed, but we still have to use about 10-15 percent of a grain mixture so that the cows get enough vitamins, along with the balanced diet, that they need for milk production. We have about 270 head of cattle, so it is a relatively small business.

I have some clients with farms as large as 40,000 head. The average in the US is probably around 900 head, so my operation is small. The trend in the dairy sector has been from small to large operations, a mix of corporate and family-owned. The big problem we have in the US at the moment is finding help; the labour market is so tight. That is a constraining factor on the dairy sector, even for us with our three employees.

You founded AgResource in 1987 at the age of 30. Was it a success from the start?

Yes! Within the first couple of weeks I had 600 clients through a new entity called DTN, Dataline Transmission Network. At that time farmers didn’t have access to price quotes, and I was one of the first on the DTN service to provide research. The owners of DTN told me that no one would ever pay me the $50 per month that I was charging for my research, but they were wrong. Businesses need good research. Today we have over 1,200 clients in 87 countries.

In your opinion, what makes a good analyst?

First, you need the ability to take large amounts of data and to put it into a format that is sensible and consistent. Second, you need the ability to get on with people. You have to have contacts within the industry to bounce ideas back and forth. Having the data is one thing, but you also have to have ground level input from real people: market participants, farmers, traders, governments etc. So a good analyst has not only to understand data, but also to understand people and what drives them. Third, you need the ability to write and to communicate your research in a readable, interesting manner. It’s a rare combination of skills.

Economics is our preferred subject of study when we look for an analyst —normally a Masters Degree or a PhD. A farm background helps.

Dan, you are among the leading analysts in the grain sector. What do you think first made your reputation as an analyst?

There are two occasions that come to mind. The first was the Carter grain embargo when we quickly understood that the US government would be buying up a lot of the surplus grain stocks.

The second was the biofuel build outs and the way that the mandates in the US, EU and elsewhere would lead to a sharp increase in demand. You could smell, taste and put your fingers in it in terms of projecting future grain demand. It was therefore relatively easy to see the bull markets that enveloped the grain markets from 2007 to 2014.

It then became equally as easy to see that agricultural markets would begin to struggle as the biofuel industry matured. We lost that demand driver while at the same time productivity and yields continued to improve.

The current situation is less clear. Trade wars are not as clear as biofuel mandates. The future in terms of politics is far more difficult to predict.”

Do you think the Chinese ethanol program could be the next driver for global grain demand?

We think it will drive some demand, but it is not clear how quickly the program can be implemented. It should lead to 37 to 45 million tonnes of addition annual corn demand. That will ultimately deplete Chinese stocks by 2021, and led to increased imports after that date. But unfortunately when you look at corn yields and technologically, the industry is advancing faster than we thought it would. Yields are increasing faster than demand. But that Chinese ethanol demand will of course be helpful to the world corn market.

In the 1960s and 1970s we were all worried about having enough food to feed the world. And that repeated itself in the early 2000s with the growth of biofuels and the food versus fuel debate.

If you do some long term modelling of population growth and farm yields, we could start to run out of agricultural farmlands around 2050. Until then, I don’t see really what, apart from a weather problem, could alter the situation. I can’t see where the next demand driver will come from. Until we find one, any rallies in price are supply-based, weather etc. I can’t see demand catching up with supply until we get to 2025 or beyond.

Could biodiesel come to the rescue of the US soybean producers?

We have seen record demand recently for biodiesel. It is mandated, so that demand trend will persist. At some point it may become mature in the same way that ethanol demand matured. We believe that world energy demand will peak somewhere between 2029 and 2031. As we start to use more electric vehicles biofuel demand will slow, but for the moment it keeps gliding upwards.

The US has anti-dumping cases against a number of biodiesel producers, so we have been trying to keep supply out of the domestic market.”

Have GM crops aggravated these surpluses? Looking back, could you argue that the world didn’t, or doesn’t, need GM crops to feed itself?

I think we need GM crops to feed the world, particularly as population continues to grow. The problem that has occurred is that farmers always overreach when they see profitability; they have bought in more land than we needed. It is not just GM that has enhanced yields—it is also farm technology, GPS, drones etc, as well as better fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides.

Looking back to the 1800s, it has always been demand shifts, whether war, biofuels or the growth of Asia that have jump started our grain demand. Our current trade wars are disruptive in terms of flows of grain rather than overall grain demand. So it is a question of shifting the chairs around the table, rather than putting more food on the table.

© Commodity Conversations ®

This blog is based on comments made to a workshop organized by Azucarera in Madrid in May 2019

Over history, market power—or pricing power—has shifted along the agricultural supply chain, first from farmers to merchants, then from merchants to processed food companies and now, ultimately, to the consumer.

The shift in power from farmer to trader began as food became more plentiful. The discovery of the Americas and the opening up of vast new agricultural areas, accompanied by efficiencies in ocean freight, along with refrigeration, dramatically increased food supply. This reduced the market power of farmers, particularly among the great land owning families in Europe.

In the UK, the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was a pivotal event in the history of food production. It removed tariffs on imported grains, lowered food prices, encouraged farm efficiencies and led to the surplus food and labour that powered the industrial revolution. And since then, despite rising population, increasing agricultural yields, as well as gradual area expansion, have reinforced this trend.

As farmers and landowners lost market power, traders gained it. The pricing power moved to the people and the companies that could finance, store, transport and process these vast quantities of food.

But over the past few decades the tectonic plates have moved again. It has been the turn of merchants to lose their market power to the food companies. It is difficult to pinpoint when that process began. Perhaps it was with the gradual introduction of processed foods and the concentration of commodity purchasing power into the hands of a reducing number of large processed food producers.

More recently, the democratization of information, particularly the rise of social media, has dramatically shifted market power from the food companies to the consumer. Social media can both build and destroy a brand, even a company. The consumer may be a lonely individual in front of his or her computer screen, but he or she has found strength in numbers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like.

But if it is the consumer that now has the market power, what does the consumer want?

The answer, of course, depends on the consumer. Broadly speaking, a consumer wants to be able to choose between a variety of convenient, cheap, safe and healthy products which haven’t damaged the environment, or infringed on human rights in their journey along the supply chain. But let’s break down that sentence a little.

Convenience—There was a time when many of us grew at least some of our own food, stored it throughout the year, and then spent long hours in the kitchen preparing it. Now, we have neither the time or the inclination—nor even the space—to invest in our food. Instead, we pick up something for dinner on the way home from work.

Variety—According to the author Michael Pollan, there are 45,000 different food items in an average US supermarket. Go to any French supermarket and you will see huge variety of yoghurts. Go to the UK and you will see a huge variety of soft drinks.

Of course, most of those different food items are made out of the same things. More than 25 percent of the 45,000 items in a US supermarket contain maize. And, according to the FAO, more than 40 percent of all human calories come from just three crops: rice, wheat and maize. So maybe, even if the consumer wants choice, what he really gets is only the perception of choice.

Safety—In the Western World we largely take it for granted that the food we eat won’t kill us. In the developing world, food safety is still a big issue, particularly in China.

Health – The consumer is shifting from tradition- or culture-based consumption to science-based consumption. Consumers no longer eat what their parents ate, or told them to eat; they eat what science and the media tells them to eat. Unfortunately, for all the reasons we know, food and nutrition science is difficult. There are often as many studies showing that a particular food is bad for you as there are showing that it is good for you.

As a result, consumers have to form their own beliefs, and they do that within their own new—and ever shifting—tribes, tribes that are usually formed on social media. These beliefs can be extremely strong; in that sense, food has become “the new religion.”

Food now defines you. Are you vegetarian, vegan, or flexitarian? Are you gluten- or lactose-intolerant? Do you mind eating GM foods, or eating animals that have eaten GM feeds? Will you only buy organic produce—or will you go for the cheaper options? Are you sugar-free? And if you are, does that include the “natural” sugars in fruit and fruit juices? (As if the sugar in sugar beet is somehow not “natural”, but that is another story.)

Sustainability—The Boston Consulting Group recently did a survey in the fashion sector that found that 75 percent of consumers said that sustainability was “extremely or very important” in their purchasing decisions. However, on closer questioning, only 7 percent said that sustainability influenced their purchase decisions. More important factors included low prices, high quality, convenience and “trends”.

BSG came to the conclusion that sustainability is a prerequisite rather than a driver of purchasing decisions. Consumers expect and demand now that everything they buy is “sustainable.” It is not an add-on, a nice-to-have thing. It is a prerequisite. But because it is a prerequisite, consumers are not willing to pay more for it. And as you all know, sustainable production has to be certified, tracked, and separated. This pushes up costs and reduces margins all along the supply chain. But at least in this, you—we—now have no choice. We have to be sustainable.

Human rights—Consumers want to know that farmers and suppliers have received a fair return for their labours, but they also want—and expect—the cheapest price possible. There is an obvious contradiction here. In many cases, perhaps in most cases, price wins.

Price—The first priority for most consumers in developing countries is to feed their families with the small amount of income that they have. Food is a major part of the family budget. In Nigeria, for example, consumers spend 64 percent of their income on food. Compare that to the UK where we spend 8.2 percent of our income on food. In the US the figure is 6.4 percent. Nearly all of us in the developed world could all pay a little more for our food without it impacting our standard of living.

However, we are all products of our evolution. We may go to the supermarket to buy an organic, certified product, but we end up buying the two-for-one special offer supermarket-own brand. After all, we have a family to feed, and the wellbeing of our family comes before the health of the planet, or the safety and wellbeing of the workers who produced it.

But there is hope in our own selfishness. Our first responsibility may be the health and wellbeing of our families—the survival of our genes. However, we know that we have to provide farmers with a living if we want them to provide us with food. We also know that our genes won’t survive for long if we don’t look after the planet. As such, sales of SOFT (Sustainable, Organic and Fair Trade) foods are increasing.

Maybe we consumers do know what we want, and maybe we are indeed sending the right signals back down the supply chain.

© Commodity Conversations ®