The French government announced July 28 it was ready to call an emergency meeting on grains in light of a surge in world prices driven by the worst drought in more than 50 years in the U.S. Midwest Crop Belt.

To judge the gravity of the situation, France is waiting for a U.S. government crop report on Aug. 10 and then a study from a G20 information body in late August or early September, the ministry official said.

“It’s too early to tell if we are heading towards a crisis or if the situation is going to turn out normally,” he said. “We have to be vigilant.”

A first-ever gathering of farm ministers from the Group of 20 countries last year set up a data-sharing system, known as AMIS, to improve transparency in agricultural markets, with the aim of tackling price volatility and ensuring food security.

The initiative aims to encourage major producing countries to avoid unilaterally imposing trade restrictions, moves that have been widely blamed for exacerbating market tensions during price spikes in 2007-08 and 2010.

The post France to seek September grain talks if crisis looms appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

CO-OPERATOR CONTRIBUTOR

There was approxi- mately 550 sheep and goats delivered to the Winnipeg Livestock Auction Nov. 3. It was a full day of bidding that brought smiles to producers. The auctioneer commented on the good quality of animals entering the arena.

The selection of ewes was good with no one breed dominating the classification. Strong bids resulted in prices ranging from $0.92 to $1.02 per pound. The lower-priced ewes were culls, ranging from $0.4250 to $0.77 per pound.

The selection on rams was limited. The 145-pound Katahdin-cross ram brought $175.45 ($1.21 per pound). This young ram was purchased for future flock improvement. Two 165-pound Dorper-cross rams brought $169.95 ($1.03 per pound).

The heavyweight lambs drew buyer interest. Although, the quantities were low, the bidding was strong. These heavy lambs brought a price range from $0.975 to $1.11 per pound. The appearance of two 123-pound ram lambs, brought $196.80 ($1.60 per pound). A heavyweight Katahdin-cross ram lamb brought $1.80 per pound.

Market lambs dominated this sale. The quality of the lambs created a constant price range; no breed dominated this classification. These lambs brought a price range from $1.81 to $1.95 per pound.

The quantity of the feeder lambs was more limited, but the quality of these lambs remained high as the market lambs. The weight ranged from 81 to 90 pounds, with price ranging from $1.7250 to $1.96 per pound.

The one-time buyers took interest in the lightweight lambs at this sale. The 70-to 76-pound lambs, brought $2.02 to $2.11 per pound. There was an exception of a group of 20, 76-pound Rideaucross lambs, that brought $149.72 ($1.97 per pound).

The 60-to 65-pound lambs, brought $2.05 to $2.13 per pound. The group of 13, 66-pound Suffolk-cross and Rideau-cross lambs, brought $1.98 per pound.

Four 41-pound Rideau-cross lambs, brought $67.24 ($1.64 per pound).

A 20-pound lamb, brought $33 ($1.65 per pound).

Boer-cross does dominated the goat doe classification at this sale. These does demanded a price range from $0.72 to $1.23 per pound. A young group of seven 76-pound Boer-cross does/doelings, brought $110 ($1.45 per pound). The cull does were clearly indicated at this sale by the lower bidding of the buyers. The low price range of the culls was in the range of $0.50 to $0.59 per pound.

The dairy and meat bucks were equally represented at this sale. A strong demand for these bucks, created a strong price range. The weight range of 85-to 200-pound bucks brought a price range of $1.50 to $1.68 per pound. The exception was a 65-pound Boer-cross buck, that brought $155 ($2.39 per pound). A 70-pound Pygmy-cross buck, brought $92.50 ($1.32 per pound).

There was a strong presence of Boer-cross bucklings. There seemed to be no relationship between weight and price of the goat. The single or small groups were purchased by the one-time buyers. The price ranged from $1.69 to $2.20 per pound.

The heavier-weight wethers brought lower prices. The 160- and 200-pound Boer-cross wethers, brought $160 and $90 ($1 and $0.45 per pound). The lighter wethers brought a price range of $1.61 to $1.98 per pound.

———

EWESLAMBS (LBS.)

110+

95 -110 80 -94

Under 80

70 -76 60 -66

41

20

$117.92 -$207.76

$68 -$77.77

$136.35 -$176

$175.75 -$209.52

$166.17 -$172.66

$144.84 -$160.36

$123.60 -$134.19

$67.24

$33

October 22, 2011

$114.55 -$161.92

$163.85 -$218.70

$109.25 -$204.60 $139.20 -$167.32

$139.43 -$145.36 $87 -$131.10

$80.96/$87.84 (46/48 lbs.)

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Wheat researchers gathered in Paris Sept. 15 to launch a global research program in what G20 president France says will support efforts to feed a growing world population.

France hopes the initiative will select priority research areas by next year, but support for the initiative is uncertain, with only 10 countries signed up so far and the United States yet to join.

The 10 are France, Germany, Britain, Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Hungary, Mexico and Turkey.

The International Research Initiative for Wheat Improvement (IRIWI) was among the measures adopted in June at a meeting of agriculture ministers from the Group of 20 major economies.

We know that by 2050 we will need to raise wheat output by 70 per cent to meet people s needs. So there is an urgency to improve genetic progress, said Nicolas Trift, scientific advisor to French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire.

IRIWI will define public research priorities on wheat at global level to avoid duplication, although before that countries still need to agree on its organisation, including the designation of a chairman and scientific committee heads and the choice of a headquarters, Trift said.

We hope that in 2012 we will be able to have a clear vision about what is important to select at global level, be it more resistant varieties, some with different nutritional qualities, he said.

About four times more money is invested in research in maize (corn) than in wheat, Trift said, adding that there was also little co-ordination between programmes around the world.

A levelling off in wheat yields has become an issue in major producers like the United States and the European Union.

Some crop seed companies have launched research into genetically modified wheat, which does not currently exist, in the wake of yield gains registered by GM corn in recent years.

Trift said GM varieties which are highly controversial in Europe would not be covered by IRIWI.

The post France Kicks Off Wheat Research Group appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

At a food security conference May 24, Gates called for U.S. leadership in a global campaign to expand food production. Agriculture ministers of the Group of 20 major developing and emerging economies meet in June, with farm and rural development a top issue.

Near-record food prices this year have focused attention on scanty grain reserves amid rising demand from a growing world population that increasingly wants meat on its plate.

Although hunger is a longtime scourge, Gates said he was optimistic it could be eased by a sustained focus on subsistence farmers who account for three-fourths of the poor and malnourished of the world.

Investment in high-yielding seeds, better farming techniques, improved tools and sales outlets “is strikingly effective,” he said.

“It’s proving the point over and over again – helping poor farming families grow more crops and get them to market is the world’s single most powerful lever for reducing poverty and hunger,” said Gates.

In 2009, the G8 group of rich nations pledged $22 billion in public funds to achieve long-lasting global food security, including some $3.5 billion from the United States. About half of the pledged money has been contributed so far.

The United Nations estimates the world population will grow by one-third, to 9.3 billion, by 2050. Per capita demand for meat will double and demand for grain will rise by 70 per cent by then, the International Food Policy Research Institute said May 24.

The $34-billion Gates Foundation, the largest U.S. philanthropy, has made $1.7 billion in grants to agricultural projects in the past five years.

Gates said a common goal of these projects, mainly in Africa and South Asia, is to triple productivity in 15 years.

The foundation helped finance development of a flood-tolerant rice strain that is being adopted in Asia.

The United States will devote some $950 million this fiscal year to “Feed the Future,” the government’s initiative for global agriculture and rural development, said Rajiv Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the conference’s opening speaker.

This amount is part of the funds pledged by President Barack Obama in 2009 as part of the G8 effort.

The Chicago Council for Global Affairs, sponsor of the day-long symposium, gave the United States an overall grade of “B-minus” for leadership in agricultural development. Projects such as Feed the Future got a “B-plus” but U.S. lack of progress on removal of barriers to development rated a “D.”

A 2012 overhaul of U.S. farm policy provides an opportunity “to rethink these important issues,” said the council in a report.

Fiscal 2012 funding for the major U.S. food aid program, Food for Progress, would be cut by 30 per cent, to $1 billion, in a bill approved by a U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee. A program that provides school meals in the developing world would be cut by 10 per cent, to $180 million.

Subcommittee chairman Jack Kingston, a Republican, said the proposed cuts were part of belt tightening for many Agriculture Department programs amid efforts to contain budget deficits.

The post U.S. Must Lead Fight Against Hunger — Bill Gates appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The tool developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) could answer two goals of agriculture ministers from the Group of 20 wealthy nations – it will make commodity markets easier to understand and help in design of a food safety net.

IFPRI said its tool will provide an early warning of excessive variability in food prices. Abnormal fluctuations in prices and returns usually are accompanied by lack of access to food by poor people. The IFPRI model tracks hard and soft wheat, corn and soybeans.

Some 925 million people are chronically hungry worldwide. A surge in grain and soybean prices pushed a global food price index to a record high in February. The index remains at near-record levels.

Meeting in late June, the G20 agriculture ministers agreed to gather data on food output and supplies to calm volatile prices. They also asked the World Food Program to develop a pilot program for small regional food stockpiles for emergency use.

IFPRI will help operate the Agricultural Market Information System, based at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. IFPRI is part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a network of research centres.

With its price volatility tool, IFPRI scans closing futures prices daily for variations that would occur with less than a five per cent probability. The results are grouped with the preceding 60 days to judge if there is a period of excessive volatility.

The information could allow government officials to look at supplies and decide whether to wait out a price spike.

The tool, a non-parametric extreme quantile model, “allows the data to really speak,” said Carlos Martins Filho, IFPRI senior research fellow. He said it was “fully flexible” and could be applied to other commodities.

The post Think-Tank Creates Food Price-Volatility Detector appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

France is seeking the support of the G20 group of wealthy and developing economies for a series of reforms intended to help stabilize food prices by buffering the cycles of peaks and troughs that are common in exchange-traded commodities.

“We agree exactly because the French proposal was initially interpreted by some producing countries, including by us, Argentina and the United States, as if it had a component of price control,” Wagner Rossi told reporters after meeting his French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire.

“That isn’t there. The minister was very clear in saying that any control would be over financial manipulation in the agricultural produce market,” he said, noting that measures would seek to reduce the extreme price swings of recent years.

Brazil’s backing could give an immense boost to France’s efforts. As the world’s top producer of beef, sugar, orange juice and cof fee, Brazil is one of the nations with most at stake should changes be made to how farm products are traded.

Still, Brazil has not abandoned its previous position that raising output is the most effective means of controlling price spikes in farm products, Rossi said.

“We have always defended this view,” he said.

Le Maire said speculator-driven price spikes in farm products often hamper producers by setting up boom and bust scenarios similar to the property market bubble that burst in 2008 during the global financial crisis.

“(Price movements) need to be less sudden and with smaller jumps,” Le Maire said.

FOOD FIGHT

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on April 8 that global food prices could rebound again after slipping from record highs in March.

Le Maire will travel to China and the United States to promote France’s proposals prior to a meeting of G20 agriculture ministers in Paris in June and was confident that members were nearing a consensus on the issue.

He said a sharp rise in grain prices had played a role in triggering the recent wave of violence in North Africa, underscor ing the need to dampen price volatility.

“We don’t want to control prices. We want to avoid a situation in which … a tonne of wheat goes from 115 euros a tonne to 300 euros from August 2010 to December 2010,” Le Maire said.

Financial market regulation has been the most divisive of the French proposals, but there has been broad agreement over expanding market intelligence through a global database of output and stocks to help prices better reflect fundamentals.

Other proposals include limiting positions on futures trades, openly identifying traders as producers or speculators and creating a register for over-the-counter trades, to increase transparency.

France has put commodities market regulation at the top of its agenda for its stint as the head of the Group of 20 economies. It blames speculation for exacerbating a surge in prices of food staples in the last year.

The post Brazil Turns And Backs French Commodity Proposal appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

France has blamed financial speculation in commodity markets for the surge in prices for food staples, and has called a meeting of G20 agriculture ministers at the end of June to discuss concrete measures to curb price volatility.

A limit on investors’ positions, creating ID cards for market operators or regulating over-the- counter trades are among the key measures in French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s G20 agenda.

Among other proposals, France has also suggested creating a database on agricultural production, consumption and stocks from governments and international organizations.

“We need more information, more transparency, more widespread understanding of the fundamentals,” said Ken Ash, director of trade and agriculture at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Then if people wish to react or overreact they do so with good information, but we need to begin with that good information.”

Overly burdensome regulation could risk draining liquidity out of commodity markets, and eventually reach the wrong target.

“The losers (of overregulation) would be farmers,” he said.

Jean-Pierre LangloisBerthelot, head of France’s cereals export lobby, also said regulation by price was working and that market distortions could be addressed through more reliable data on supply and demand.

“We have to have a very open market, a very transparent market where all the players know the rules,” he said.

Experts also questioned the idea of building stocks in import-dependent countries.

“Our advice on stocks (as a measure) to calm markets is: Don’t go near them,” said Ash, who deemed stocks unmanageable.

Langlois-Berthelot said high costs, the difficulty of preserving grain in non-temperate climates, and the risk of fraud, made this solution unrealistic. More transparent data sharing would work “a lot better,” he said.

A physical transfer of food commodities when needed could be an option though, French academic Philippe Chalmin said.

“I don’t think pre-positioned stocks are technically feasible. It’s going to cost an arm and a leg while it’s not hard to move wheat,” said Chalmin, who also advises French Prime Minister Francois Fillon on commodities and food issues.

The post Information And Transparency Key To Market Stability appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

International Limited said March 10 it has agreed to buy the North East Terminal grain-handling facility in Wadena, Saskatchewan.

The $25-million deal, which also includes crop input facilities at Wadena, Kelvington, Foam Lake and Ponass Lake, Saskatchewan, is expected to close on April 13.

The sale hinges on approval by North East shareholders, most of whom are local farmers, said the terminal’s general manager Garnet Ferguson. The 38,000-tonne crop-handling facility opened in 1992.

Promoting pet food:

The federal government is investing $175,000 to help Canada’s pet food industry promote its products internationally. The Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC) will use the funds to build relationships with new and existing customers, and increase the sales, exports and value of its products, which include a range of pet food for dogs, cats, birds and other domesticated animals. The council will also attend U.S. and other international trade shows, and participate in outgoing missions, a federal release says. – Staff Food stocks:France has asked the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) to look into how pre-positioned food stocks in poor countries could help regions fight sudden rises in agricultural prices.

The organization is due to present a report on the issue at a meeting of agriculture ministers of the Group of 20 economies at the end of June. Paris has made the regulation of commodities markets, mainly agricultural, one of the priorities of its year-long presidency of the G20. Big plans:Morocco’s state-run phosphate monopoly OCP said March 9 it has started work on a new fertilizer plant as it seeks to strengthen its presence and sales to Africa’s under-productive agricultural sector. The plant is part of a plan OCP announced last year to turn the world’s top phosphate reserves holder into the biggest producer of diammonium phosphate (DAP) and monoammonium phosphate (MAP) by mid-2015. The one-million-tonne-per-annum plant is the second of four OCP plants to build as it gears up for a surge in global demand from farmers.

Adios La Nińa:The worst La Nińa weather anomaly in a decade should be gone completely by June, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center says. “The majority of (weather computer) models predict a return to … neutral” conditions by the Northern Hemisphere summer, the CPC, an office under the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, said.

La Nińa, the little sister to the more infamous El Nińo, is an abnormal cooling of waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean and wreaks havoc with weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region.

Cost of credit cards:

Support small business. Pay with cash or debit. That’s the gist of a new Canadian Federation of Independent Business initiative to raise awareness over crippling cost of credit cards over and above the interest rates on users’ unpaid balances. “Most consumers are unaware that each time their credit card is swiped, the merchant pays between 1.5 to three per cent of the sale to the credit card company, while an Interac debit transaction costs less than 12 cents,” said CFIB spokesman Dan Kelly.

– Staff Buying land:Chinese edible oil firm Julong Group, said Beijing may provide subsidies this year to local companies buying up plantation land outside the country, as China seeks to secure food supplies.

Sun Wei Jun, an official with Julong Group, said the government would like Chinese firms to own more food estates overseas.

Julong Group, the largest unlisted edible oils processor in China, has already ventured into oil palm estates five years ago on the Indonesian side of Borneo Island and now has a land bank of 100,000 hectares.

The post In Brief… – for Mar. 17, 2011 appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Bruno Le Maire was addressing the General Assembly after the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported earlier this month that its food price index rose for the seventh month in a row in January to reach its highest level on record.

Declaring that food price swings were “intolerable” for both producers and consumers, he said they “make us run the risk of experiencing again hunger riots like those that affected a certain number of countries in 2008.”

At that time, riots broke out in countries as far apart as Egypt, Cameroon and Haiti.

Le Maire was laying out to the General Assembly France’s agenda for the Group of 20 top developed and developing economies, of which it currently holds the chair. Taming volatile commodity prices is one of the goals of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The price rises have been blamed on extreme weather, rising populations and loss of farming land, but Le Maire said they had been worsened by speculation, poor information on commodity stocks and sudden decisions by countries to halt exports.

The minister, whose speech to the closed assembly session was released by France’s UN mission, said Paris was proposing a series of measures including public investment in agriculture around the world and encouraging private investment.

A Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009 pledged to raise $20 billion over three years to promote development of agriculture, but French officials say only some $2 billion has been disbursed with little hope of more in the short term as developed countries trim budgets.

Le Maire said regulation of international commodity markets was also needed, but said this meant improving their operations, not “fighting against the market.”

“We don’t want a return to an administrated agricultural economy,” he said.

At a news conference, Le Maire said the United States was already “quite advanced” on market regulation through its Dodd-Frank act, signed into law last year, offering provisions that the European Union did not yet possess.

The post Food Price Rises Bring Risk Of New Riots appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Food price volatility is here to stay, the World Bank cautioned, amid growing worries there could be another full-blown food crisis only three years after the last one.

In some parts of the world, weather-related supply shocks have pushed up prices, and there is a likelihood of substantial long-term increases. Food problems will be tackled at meetings of the Group of 20 major economies this year in France.

The possibility of a full food crisis “is a concern and countries should be getting ready for it,” said Hugh Bredenkamp, deputy director of the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department.

The IMF’s advice to governments faced with rising food prices is to focus social protection measures on the poorest; to resist export bans or export taxes that disrupt global food markets; and to ensure that higher food prices do not translate inadvertently into monetary policy tightening.

“The direct impact of food prices on CPI is a one-time thing, but in itself is not inflation, so countries should accommodate … set monetary targets to accommodate the direct impact from price jumps,” said Bredenkamp.

“But countries need to be careful not to allow second-round effects, so if food prices go up (they) don’t want that to spill into higher wages or prices of other products,” he added.

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